My Library

I was surprisingly calm at this news. After all, I’d been persecuted as a bookworm sissy as a child -- since my body was frail and I stood only five feet tall. This condition took me out of rough and tumble ball games, and it was difficult for me to hit a ball because the bats were too heavy. I learned to live with this persecution -- a childish persecution because of an inequality and a differentness. It wasn’t until my twelfth year in high school that I suddenly spurted up one foot. I was still slender and a "weakling," certainly no George Atlas or Arnold Schwarzenegger. But I had put on enough musculature sufficient to make a sudden strike and punch out an erstwhile jock persecutor. When word of this got around, the persecution MERDE stopped -with the additional result that several female peers took interest in me. In mulling over the ASPR situation, I knew I couldn’t stride into the venerable Society and start protesting and defending myself because I was interested in Scientology. Even if someone had decided that the Scientology thing was my vulnerable spot, to me it was not, of course. But in the minds of the gullible the accusation might be made to seem meaningful. I certainly had never made a secret of my considerable interests, including those of Scientology which was among the many topics I openly talked about. But I felt I now knew something of what a Jew, a member of a minority race, or someone of a different religion might feel upon an occasion of prejudice or persecution of them.