When the wealthy couple saw their newborn’s face, the mother gasped, “Take him away, he’s a monster.” They abandoned him at the hospital. A kind nurse raised him. Twenty years later, the couple desperately needed a rare surgery. The world-famous surgeon walked in, revealed his birthmark, and…

is not.

The cruelty of children is a sharp, unrefined blade, but the cruelty of adults is a slow-acting poison. I felt it in the grocery store aisles when mothers would quickly yank their toddlers away from me. I heard it in the harsh, hushed whispers of the schoolyard. Monster. Burn victim. Two-face.

One afternoon, when I was ten, I came home with my continue reading …