Professional Documents
Culture Documents
GINGER KID - Chapter Excerpt
GINGER KID - Chapter Excerpt
GINGER KID - Chapter Excerpt
ISBN 978-1-4197-2870-9
shy redhead from Queens who spent way more time getting
made fun of than being funny. The only way I’d have believed
I was going to New Zealand by myself is if one of the bullies
mailed me there.
As I got older, I learned that most of us get bullied. Most of
us get scared. And most of us have never been to New Zealand
by ourselves. Except people from New Zealand; they’ve pretty
much all been there at some point. I hear it’s super-nice. Maybe
I’ll let you know in the next book.
The exact reason I’m writing this book is because I wanted
to share my story in the hope that you can see it as your own.
Spoiler alert: My story comes out okay in the end. I’m hoping
that yours does, too.
and the weekend and summer vacation like everyone else. But
when I was a kid, school was good to me. Because school was
easy.
The first thing that made school easy was the familiarity. I’m
the youngest of four and from Briarwood, a neighborhood in
Queens where teachers work at the same school so long, it’s like
they’re serving time.
I imagine a judge pounding a gavel in front of a roomful of
graying, chalk-covered middle-agers. “You are hereby sentenced
to twenty-five years of glitter-covered hand turkeys,” he’d shout,
jowls trembling. The teachers would then shuffle back to their
respective faculty lounges, where they’d be met with a lifetime
supply of instant coffee and rexo sheets and debate whether or
not this was better than picking up trash off a highway.
All my teachers had taught three Hofstetters before me, so I
often started the school year being given some sort of in-front-
of-the-class responsibility like passing out reading materials or
helping pronounce students’ names. I accepted with an artificial
air of reluctance, thereby not losing my street cred while simul-
taneously exuding authority.
Meanwhile, my sister Beth was just one year older than I. So
when I was in fifth grade, I knew the sixth graders and they
knew me. That cemented my street cred. There is no greater
grade school validation than an older kid saying hello to you in
the hallway and meaning it.
Something important to know about where I grew up is that
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