It wasn’t the latest toy or a trip to Disneyworld that topped my wish list as a kid. No, I yearned for what friends and classmates had, what came so easily to them. I wanted to be normal. The gimpy leg aside, there were other oddities. While most kids wonder about their parent’s sanity levels, I knew Mom and Dad were wacky. My mother was a nun – really. My father liked to take things apart – walls and ceilings, mostly. The foil-backed insulation in my room shimmered in a number of spots void of sheetrock; the closet door never did make it back onto the hinges, and I lost endless change, two necklaces and a contact lens in the gap between the wall and floor where a baseboard used to be. Needless to say, when friends came over, we played in the living room, which had all four walls […]