A Shot in the Arm
During our neighborhood adventures growing up, I got teased a lot. I lived in a small town long enough ago that we actually played outside when the weather was sunny, so most of the time adults weren't immediately supervising what we were doing. We had rules of course, but no grown-ups were right there watching everything we said and did. I was an easy target for the neighbor boys. I was an athletic liability in games of baseball. I was shy, chubby, and super-sensitive. Looking back now, I can say that the teasing wasn't really that bad; it wasn't enough for me to stop tagging along wanting to be included. It did demoralize me a little bit though. It gave me a Charlie Brown sort of feeling -- "I can't do anything right!" Something happened one summer that turned things around for me. At the time it seemed like a small incident to all involved, but now I look back on it and realize it did me a lot of good. One of the boys called me a Tubolard quite regu...