My Sister Called Me a Leech at Thanksgiving Until a Colonel Stood Up and Changed the Room

she was old enough to understand what a room was. She was not cruel in any deliberate way. She was competitive in the specific manner of someone who has decided that status is finite, that one person’s elevation requires another’s reduction.

I was the back-of-the-classroom kind of quiet. I won the science fair three years running. I read books about continue reading …