What examples are in your life of where you have responded to acceptance or rejection in such a way that bolstered your opinion of yourself? If you think of an example where you felt humiliated or degraded, do you now see a way to change any decision you might have made about yourself?

There were times I was out of sync with my peers, but I wasn’t really aware of it. We got to have a week of celebrations for our eighth-grade graduation. A swim party, a hay ride, putt-putt and a dance. We were putting in our suggestions for the music for the dance. This was 1971 and eighth graders liked rock and roll, Three Dog Night etc. So, my suggestions of more relaxing music like Petula Clark practically got me laughed out of the room. It surprised me, but I shrugged it off. Obviously, I wasn’t in the “popular” group. Luckily for me someone chose Bridge Over Troubled Waters. That was a long song to get to dance slow with the most popular guy in the school. I don’t know how I got to have such a treat, but I remember it as a highlight. A couple weeks earlier he stood up for me when I got accused of cheating on the history test, because I got such a high score. (If there had been a curve applied at the time, my score would have ruined it.) Luckily, my science project showed that my explanation of sleep learning was valid. It showed that short term retention of a lot of information was possible. It was probably reading the book out loud to record it onto the cassette tape that did it, more so than listening to the tape as I went to sleep. But nevertheless, I was exonerated. But a few months later I sure couldn’t have told you a single historical fact. For many months while writing this book I wondered why these events had significance in my life. I finally asked if it helped my attitude about myself. Humans tend to be social and being accepted or rejected does feed into our opinions of ourselves. But it is still our inner response to it that makes the difference to us. Somehow, I took two acts of kindness from the most popular boy in school as confirmation that, even out of sync, I was somehow OK. It just helped me relax into being me.