Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story by Ben Carson Read Free Book Online

other schools, kids looked up to me because of my top grades. But at Hunter Junior High, academics came a little farther down the line.
    Being accepted by the in-group meant wearing the right clothes, going to the places where the guys hung out, and playing basketball. Even more important, to be part of the in-group, kids had to learn to cap on others.
    I couldn't ask my mother to buy me the kind of clothes that would put me on their social-acceptance level. While I may not have understood how hard my mother worked, I knew she was trying to keep us off of public assistance. By the time I went into ninth grade, Mother had made such strides that she received nothing except food stamps. She couldn't have provided for us and kept up the house without that subsidy.
    Because she wanted to do the best she could for Curtis and me, she skimped on herself. Her clothes were clean and respectable, but they weren't stylish. Of course, being a kid, I never noticed, and she never complained.
    For the first few weeks I didn't say anything when the guys capped on me. My lack of response only encouraged them to bear down, and they capped on me mercilessly. I felt horrible, left out, and hurt because I didn't fit in. Walking home alone, I'd wonder, What's wrong with me? Why can't I belong? Why do I have to be different? I comforted myself by saying, “They're just a bunch of buffoons. If this is how they get their enjoyment, they can go ahead, but I'm not going to play their silly game. I'm going to be successful, and one day I'll show all of them.”
    Despite my defensive words, I still felt left out and rejected. And, like most people, I wanted to belong and didn't like being an outsider. Unfortunately, after a while their attitude rubbed off on me until eventually the disease infected me too. Then I said to myself, “All right, if you guys want to cap, I'll show you how to cap.”
    The next day I waited for the capping to start. And it did. A ninth grader said, “Man, that shirt you're wearing has been through World War I, World War II, World War III, and World War IV.”
    “Yeah,” I said, “and your mama wore it.”
    Everybody laughed.
    He stared at me, hardly believing what I'd said. Then he started to laugh too. He slapped me on the back. “Hey, man, that's OK.”
    My esteem rose right then. Soon I capped on the top cappers throughout the whole school. It felt great to be recognized for my sharp tongue.
    From then on when anyone capped on me, I'd turn it around and fling it into their faces—which was the idea of the game. Within weeks the in-crowd stopped tormenting me. They didn't dare direct any sarcasm my way because they knew I would come up with something better.
    Once in a while, students ducked out of the way when they saw me coming. I didn't let them get away even then. “Hey, Miller! I'd hide my face too if I looked that ugly!”
    A mean remark? Certainly, but I comforted myself by saying, “Everybody does it. Outcapping everyone else is the only way to survive.” Or sometimes I'd say, “He knows I didn't really mean it.”
    It didn't take long for me to forget how it felt to be the object of capping. My taking over the game solved one great problem for me.
    Unfortunately, it didn't solve what to do about clothes.
    Aside from being ostracized for my clothes, the kids called me poor a lot. And to their thinking, if you were poor, you were no good. Oddly enough, none of the students were well-off and had no right to talk about anybody else. But as a young teenager, I didn't reason that out. I felt the stigma of being poor most acutely because I didn't have a father. Most of the kids I knew had two parents, and that convinced me that they were better off.
    During ninth grade one task brought more embarrassment to me than anything else. As I've said, we received food stamps and couldn't have made it without them.
    Occasionally my mother sent me to the store to buy bread or milk with the stamps. I hated to go, fearing one