COMING UP
MY COUSIN ROGER was three years older than me. And he was a bully.
He did wrestling, and he was strong and powerful. “See the muscles in his arms!” kids on farms near ours said.
“The muscles in his head are bigger,” I told them.
Roger heard, and bullied me more than ever. I wasn’t strong and powerful like him. I was small and skinny. Roger used to twist my arms up behind my back, bend my wrist backward to make me yell. Stuff like that.
It was my fault sometimes. Roger wasn’t much good at school, while I was quite clever with words and stuff. Even though he was three years older, he was just one class ahead of me.
One time, a kid was saying, “He’s in a class of his own at wrestling.”
I said, “Yeah,
