“What is wrong with you?”  My mother had said these words so many times to me that my sisters had adopted them.  I had a habit of grabbing some scissors and pulling up a chair while my mother cooked dinner.  I cut up whatever was in sight–letters, bills, report cards–it was relaxing after a long day at school to just cut things up, cut, cut, cut.  The way some people needlepoint.  My father saw me doing this once and said, “Don’t be an idiot.”  I didn’t speak to him all night, and then I wrote a retaliatory note to him, in pencil so dark it ripped the paper.   I pressed down on it like a dying man, writing, “I am not an idiote.  Do not call me one!”  I put it on his pillow.  My dad apologized right away but from that day on whenever I did something stupid, my sisters would say, “I am not an ID-I-OTE!  Do not call me one!” in the voice of John Merrick, the Elephant man.