MEMOIR
I’m As Surprised as Anybody at How I Turned Out
This is my origin story
I don’t think anybody who saw me when I was a kid would have ever imagined I’d turn out this way.
“You’re off in your own little world,” the adults around me frequently said, and they didn’t mean it in a good way. I was very quiet, shy and socially awkward. If I’d been born a few decades later, they might have called me introverted. Perhaps they’d have tested me for things like ADHD.
I am sure nobody thought I’d turn out to be so opinionated and outspoken in my old age.
It’s true that I always felt different
Some kids who don’t fit in suffer from low self-esteem. But fairly early on, I came to the conclusion that I preferred my own ways over theirs.
Maybe this was a defense mechanism. I’ve written about how hard it was to be a clumsy failure at sports in a school that placed a high premium on athletic achievement. The simplest way to deal with that is to decide that sports are stupid, right? But I can’t unthink that now and it doesn’t matter to me anymore. Nobody has the power to force me to attempt sports anymore, thank God.
