Growing Up In The Future

Max Jones runs away from home to Earthport where:

"He saw his first extra-terrestrial, an eight-foot native of Epsilon Gemini V, striding out of a shop with a package under his left arms..."
-Robert Heinlein, Starman Jones (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1966), 3, p. 35.

I first read that passage between the ages of seven and eleven and would have had to guess the meaning of "extra-terrestrial" from context.

James Blish's Chris deFord watches Scranton go Okie and is shanghaied.

Comparable Poul Anderson characters include:

Pete in "The Acolytes" and "The Green Thumb";
Eric Wace in The Man Who Counts;
Nat Falkayn in "Wingless";
Tabitha Falkayn in The People Of The Wind;
Diana Crowfeather in The Game Of Empire.

We are told something about their upbringings even if we first see them as adults.