I consider myself quite lucky. In my first 28 years of being a Pompey fan, I saw us relegated only once. My son is not so fortunate - he's in his third season of being a supporter and, with luck, should avoid experiencing his third relegation.
I can pinpoint the exact day my son (Adam, now aged 11) became a fan. He'd been to a few matches with me before - on one occasion forcing me to miss the latter stages of a thrilling midweek 1-0 triumph over Crystal Palace because he was cold and tired (so was I, but unlike him I was prepared to tough it out as we were beating the Eagles). But it was on October 22, 2011, that he suddenly caught the bug.
It was a 3-1 win over Doncaster and, for some reason, he paid attention to the game to an extent that had previously been beyond him. He lapped it up and loved every minute as goals by Luke Varney (2) and Dave Kitson swept us to a famous victory. Well, a victory.
He decided Kitson was his favourite player - I know, it seems daft to say it now - although after a few more home matches, Erik Huseklepp deposed Kitson at the top of his favourites' list. All was well, but not for long. Within weeks of Adam becoming a Pompey fan, he was sitting next to me on the north lower watching and listening in wonderment, and joining in, as what seemed like the whole ground sang 'We will never die, we will never die...'
Home to Ipswich, February 14, 2012, was the occasion and Pompey were hurtling towards a date with oblivion. I had to explain to him that if things didn't go well over the next few days, we might never get to go to Fratton Park again. It wasn't the first time in recent years I'd known that dread, but it was the first time I'd had to pass it on to a child.
That was an upsetting thought to Adam, but he didn't realise it wasn't the norm. He probably thought all clubs diced with going out of business from time to time; therefore, it wasn't as devastating to him as it was to those of us for whom Pompey had been a way of life for decades. The longer you'd been supporting, the darker those days must have seemed.
As an 11-year-old, Adam was not alone in flitting between naming this player and that player as his favourite at any one time. But the difference in this troubled era that he'd started his 'career' as a Pompey fan was that youngsters had no choice in having to keep choosing new favourites.
Huseklepp has signed for Birmingham, I had to tell him after school one day. Oh no, he'd say, but by the next game he'd have a new favourite. Marco Futacs was No1 for a while, David Norris took over after THAT goal up the road, Joel Ward for a time, and even Kanu held a certain fascination for Adam after I outlined the Nigerian's pre-Pompey CV and told him he'd won the FA Cup for us and scored against AC Milan. In time Ashley Harris and Adam Webster, our local boys made good, became other players Adam looked up to.
Last season, 2012-13, was Adam's first full year as a fan - and my 32nd - and to him, it was not really any different to the previous season. Some excellent home performances and wins, some dreadful displays and defeats; players coming, players going; stories of court cases and threats to the future of the club. So many court adjournments were there, it became a running joke. We half expected to hear one day that a decision on whether to adjourn the next hearing had itself been adjourned. In fact I can't be sure that didn't happen at one stage.
Eventually, of course, we reached April 10, 2013. A blue-letter day if ever there was one. I finished at work early that day and intended to get some more done at home, but the need to follow events at the Royal Courts of Justice on Twitter took over and my productivity levels fell away sharply.
When the remarkable news came through that the club could, as we all hoped, pass into the hands of the Pompey Supporters' Trust, I'd never known such a feeling of relief. It felt like we'd reached the end of a very dark, dismal tunnel. Of course, the first person I passed on the good news to was my son. The fact he took it with a large pinch of salt said much about how, in his short spell as a fan, the only thing you could be certain about where Pompey were concerned was the uncertainty.
Three days later we and a few thousand others had another strange afternoon up at Griffin Park - one when we could breathe easy, relax as Blues fans and enjoy the very presence of a future, and a rather exciting one, for our club, but also one when a typical Pompey defeat (2-1 up with a few minutes to go; lost 3-2) all but condemned us to relegation.
The drop had been confirmed by the time we gathered, a week later, to celebrate the actual signing of the Pompey paperwork over to the PST and blew away Sheffield United as though they were a local pub side. The irony of Adam joining in the home fans' laughter as Kitson had a nightmare wasn't lost on me.
And now, here we are six months into League Two life and still things aren't straightforward. They were never going to be, were they? Once again, Adam and I have watched some God-awful football this season - so much so I wonder if he'll be able to stand the joy and exictement he'll undoubtedly feel if (or when) we reach anything like the heights of 2003 to 2008 again.
I think he looks forward to going to a match as much as I do (to be honest, if he didn't, he wouldn't come - I don't force him!), undeterred in the same way as me by the fact it's against Scunthorpe, Northampton or Mansfield. It doesn't really matter who we're playing. It's Fratton Park and it's football. I honestly think I am anticipating fourth-division trips to Fratton as keenly as I looked forward to Premier League encounters with the biggest and best teams in the land a decade ago or less.
For all we can now look forward to - and what that is exactly is the prospect, in the short, medium and long-term, of promotions, cup runs, famous victories, great goals and perhaps even further Premier League and European campaigns, I thank everyone who played a part in that against-the-odds PST victory.
I'm proud to say I played a small role myself - I own one tenth of a £1k share along with some fellow hacks - but I'm just one of thousands whose combined financial backing and combined will proved many doubters wrong and saw off various characters who, shall we say, weren't welcome here.
You'll have heard many people repeat the fact that Pompey are now the country's biggest community-owned club. The way football is going, we won't be the last to take the route we have, and one day we may no longer be the biggest of our kind. But we will always be pioneers - Pompey pioneers who went some way to claiming football back for the people it should always have been for.
And one day, when I am no longer around to sit in my seat on the north lower but my son is still sitting in his, and is perhaps taking his own kids with him, I hope he will think back to the 2011-12 season and remember singing 'We will never die'. That'll be quite a tale to recount to the next generation ... I just hope they will appreciate how lucky they are still to have a Pompey to support.
Steve Bone, who also writes for the Sports Mail and the Pompey matchday programme, will be contributing occasional articles to the PST website.
He can be contacted at [email protected] and is @stevebone1 on Twitter.