I was a creative momma’s boy, and I sucked my thumb until I was thirteen. When I played house with my cousins and my sister, I was always a “girl” with a towel on my head, pretending I had long hair. I remember always feeling like an oddball, misfit, or less than good enough. In sixth grade, we were assigned to draw a picture of our teacher sitting at her desk. My teacher didn’t like mine and she made fun of it in front of the entire class, and I was devastated. My mom picked me up from school and I began to cry. When I told her the story, she did a screeching U-turn in the street and bolted us back to the school principal’s office. They called the teacher in, and my mother read her like a cheap novel! My mother has always had my back, and she still does now at age eighty.
