For some, I am told, high school days are the best in your life. My experiences were to the contrary. I did a lot of running those six years, grades seven through twelve, often passing the track team, clearly identified by their gym garb. I was in my street clothes running, not for sport, but for survival. I was never caught by my pursuers while running, though I was often cornered. With no means of escape I accepted my fate without struggle.

You may think I was bullied, but that would not be entirely true. Pretty much everyone wanted to beat me up at one time or another, even the girls. Perhaps it was because I didn’t fight back. Or maybe it was my smile. I smiled all the time, especially when I shouldn’t. When cornered, I smiled. When pushed and shoved and humiliated, I smiled. The worse the trouble, the greater was my smile. I suppose if this were happening today, someone in authority would notice and medication would be prescribed to return me to normalcy.

A bit of background may be in order here. My mother ran away from my birth father before I reached the age of two, while she was pregnant with my sister. She left because he got fired constantly, but not due to inferior workmanship. He was simply too smart, he was always telling his employers how stupid they were. This is what my mother told me when I was much older.

She married again. My stepfather was a good man until somewhere around the birth of the seventh child. He began drinking and taking out his problems on my mother and me. At his parents urging, he checked himself into a mental institution the summer before I entered high school. He may have conditioned me for the days ahead. I never fought back. He also hit a lot harder than any of the boys at school.

If adversity builds character, I clearly have a great deal of the stuff. It is the struggles of life that either make or break us. Some quit while still young. Others, like my stepfather, fall at a later age. Most persevere. I worried I might be teetering on the edge of the abyss. To forestall my eventual transfer to a mental institution I chose to major in psychology. While my classmates were busy analyzing everyone else, I focused on myself. I learned, without reservation, that I was indeed undeniably crazy. The silver lining within this assessment was the revelation that so is everyone else.