I never made a secret of being less-than-optimally mature and having an imagination that makes Attention Deficit look laser focused. Let’s be honest, keeping that reality quiet was a non-starter idea anyway; that particular cat shot right out of the bag before I even escaped my own play-pen, and, well, I was an early climber.

And speaking of climbing, I was a social climber from the beginning. I kinda think I’m better than I probably actually am, if you take my meaning. No, I never gave a serious fig for name-dropping (though, boy-howdy, the stories I could tell you!) or for impressing people with my associations with prestige. Not only do I find overt fawning generally an embarrassment except between actual friends, I’ve always been too poor, too cheap, or both when it came to buying Name merchandise. Not to mention that I think rich retailers should pay me to advertise their products, not vice-versa, and so on those rare occasions when object-lust converged with mega-sale, I am the person who instantly took said objet home and blacked out the corporate logo or sat and snipped it off the clothing, stitch by stitch.

All of this information is not as off-topic as you might think. My theme, you see, is that I think pretty highly of myself just as-is. Now, no doubt there are those detractors that might hasten to add that “it’s a dirty job but somebody’s gotta do it.” I’ll leave them to fester in their own frightful fallacies. If indeed my fine self image is problematic, there might be some other persons fit to share a portion of the blame with me: parents who subscribed to that bizarre notion, unconditional love; teachers (not counting my third grade ogress) who actually taught and encouraged me. Family and friends, too, who still unfailingly clothe me in the cape-and-tights raiment of someone admittedly far better than I am but for whom I am quite willing to be mistaken while I’m yet busily aspiring to become them.Meanwhile, I can tell you that I’ve always had a pretty good sense of this being surrounded by earthly and supernal cheerleaders to assist and enhance my sense of personal privilege and well-being in the world. It keeps me on a relatively even keel.

Now, if you happened to be on board here when I’ve previously mentioned coping with anxiety, clinical depression, phobias (yes, I’m a veteran of all of those), nerd-hood, weirdness and being 17 (I’ve survived all of those too), it should be as obvious as the strings carrying Ed Wood’s flying saucers that I am neither perfect nor so deluded as to think myself so, let alone be immune to self-doubt and those temporary bouts of dis-ease that rate various positions on the inadequate-to-self-loathing slide rule.

But thanks to this even more deeply ingrained, however fanciful, liking of myself, I have always eventually recovered and returned to my standard state of cheery self-hugging enthusiasm. I think I’m a little like those boxers’ training dummies, taking a righteous smack to the schnoz from time to time that floors me, but always eventually sproinging back upright with my vapid but genuine grin on my face, just happy to be here. Because, by golly, I really do think I’m kind of swell.