My whole childhood was spent being curious, analyzing, dreaming, creating, sketching. I was never lonely.  Though the crime rate was significantly higher than today, I was never afraid to be alone in any part of our tough industrial city. I walked everywhere and nowhere for hours – discovering, observing and wondering – being sociable when encountering others but preferring silence. That no one recognized I had been gone most of a day pleased me. (Where adults are concerned, being invisible is sometimes a gift. . .)

Lacking physical prowess and coordination, I practiced sideline sportsmanship instead of sports. But despite being last chosen in playground activities and suffering from chronic daydreaming in class, I survived. . . with nary a syndrome nor a multifaceted deficit disorder applied to my child or adolescent being. Oddly, no one seemed perturbed by my being “different” – least of all, me.

By the age of 16, I was on my own – a stock clerk, living in a boarding house. . . blissfully being and becoming whatever it is we all become at one point.

And so. . . looking back. . . wondering as I have always done. . . What would my life have been? And who and what would I be now. . . if, like today’s hovered-over children, I had been forced to live a more ordained and most euphemistically called “normal childhood”?