I.

When I entered first grade in 1956, I faced a sort of peer treatment I had never previously experienced.

A little over two years earlier I had survived a bout of non-paralytic polio. My playmates then were happy to see me well. It didn’t affect their friendship that I had lost my resilience and coordination.

In first grade, though, among boys I had not previously known, I was suddenly a “sissy.”

This wasn’t about sexuality. Kids in