— for Jessie Rice
I was a fragile child, and whenever my parents used a word I didn’t understand to describe me to friends and relatives or in a medical survey for my school, I felt compelled to look it up. I looked up asthma and myopia and somnambulance and nocturnal enuresis, which sounded innocuous enough until I discovered it meant that I wet the bed.
I couldn’t let my peers find out about my nocturnal enuresis. I was already getting shoved, slapped, pinned to the ground, noogied, and pestered on a regular basis for having asthma and wearing glasses, for being a bookworm, for taking violin and bowling lessons, and for having a Royal typewriter upon which I typed stories, poems, and funny letters to fictional people. It didn’t help that I had parents who took good care of me, whereas most of my peers did not.
