Believe this. A child as precocious, rebellious, outspoken, and demonstrative as I was would have received thorough and regular beatings and evictions from peer groups. Except for one unexpected exception: other kids got smarter around me. Even if they came to pick a fight. It was like a field effect, and even if they didn’t understand it, they respected it for a simple reason: all the other kids knew this. If they attacked me? They were attacking -all of them-. Think about this carefully, because it can change the meaning of our past and the shape of our future in ways we have thus far been too timid to imagine.