When I was nine I spent approximately three weeks laying on my hands in bed, sick to near-death from the chicken pox. My mom may dispute the three weeks claim. It could've been one, or it could've been five for all I knew in my state of delirium, but it seemed like an eternity's worth of Monkees and Brady Bunch reruns, interspersed with Ducktails and chicken noodle soup.

I was somewhat new to school at the time, in our first year back in Kansas after a year's exile in Missouri following my parents' divorce. It was a nice school in a nice neighbourhood, but I didn't like my teacher because she wore an unrealistic curly brown wig. She was different like I was different and I hated being different, therefore I hated my teacher.