meant to wangle a metal ball past the holes by moving the surface via two knobs. As soon as I’d made it for the first time all the way from start to finish, I set out to maneuver the metal ball back to the start. And then promptly back to the end, and once more to the beginning. This I did over and over again. My record: more than 1400 holes.

The same kind of patience was evident in my artsy endeavors, which were probably my most distinct gift as a child. When my family and I returned from a visit to the zoo or harbor, I would immediately sit down at my desk and draw the animals or ships I’d seen.

Then I started school and turned out to be a genius at languages …. No, wrong again. German was my least favorite subject. Art—loved it. P.E.—belonged to the top three of the class. Math—the best. But German? It bored me out of my tiny little mind. Learning letters, copying texts, enduring dictations. A horrible ordeal. The special classes for particularly weak students didn’t help, either. Far from improving over time, my spelling got increasingly worse. I wonder now if I actually put in spelling mistakes on purpose when copying a boring text. Was it my stubbornness again? A defiant “I’ll show you that these stupid exercises are no good”?

(More to come soon.)