A haircut my mother made with a bowl

The importance of being weird and embracing it

I had thick glasses and a haircut with a fringe that only my mother could make with the right-shaped bowl.

I was bullied badly.

I was standing on a stack of books on the top row of every school photograph.

And yet I could run like the wind, and I captained our school rugby team to the Auckland Championship.

My teacher hated me, and once put my desk in the s…