I was a skinny child. So skinny that I had only one vertical stripe on my pajamas. So skinny that I was swimming in a lake one summer and a dog came out to fetch me – three times. My mother used to scrub laundry on my rib cage. People looking for a toothpick at the dinner table would grab me. You get the picture.
I wasn't a particularly bad-looking child but I was uncommonly thin, and it took me years to discover any humour in it.
I remember as if it were an hour ago the time a beautiful girl in our school rode past me on her silver bicycle and shouted, "Hi Skinny!" as if that were my given name. I would rather she had leveled a potato gun at me and pulled the trigger.
I suppose I became a writer partly as a response to the enormous humiliation of being teased as a child. A sense of humour and my ability with words were the only weapons I had in my arsenal. So I kept my wit sharp and my tongue forked.
In elementary school a classmate broke my thumb with a hockey stick, then laughed as I cried. His name was Ken, but I called him other things, things I'm not proud of, things involving his family history and his future. As he sulked away I realized that sticks and stones can break bones, but words can shatter something far deeper.
In high school an upper classman named Larry approached me in the hallway and said, "Callaway, you're so skinny we should slide you under the door when we need stuff." I couldn't think of a gracious response, so I said, "Well, you're so fat you broke your family tree!" He was stunned. I was on a terrible roll. I said, "You're so fat when you bend over you cause an eclipse on three continents."
I thought he would murder me and the jury would unanimously acquit him. Instead the colour drained from his face as he turned and walked away.
That same year I discovered writing. I was about 90 pounds at the time, which was just enough to make the keys on the typewriter go down. My first critical review came from classmates in response to my essay, "A Day in the Life of an English Student." I believe the teacher's reason for reading it publicly was to humiliate me. To show the class that using his name in an assignment was improper. That ridiculing his teaching habits would not go unpunished. It backfired big time. The students clapped. They cheered. They loved me. A few rose to their feet. The teacher stopped reading and wrote "D" across my essay in red ink. "Composition poor. Grammar bad. See me after school."
As I sat in my desk that afternoon I began to dream. Of the day Ken and Larry would beg forgiveness for not treating me better. Of writing hugely successful fiction jammed with mystery, humour, sarcasm and revenge.
Two things stood in the way: A praying mother. And a father who promised me a watch if I read one chapter of Proverbs each day for a month. I began to encounter verses like, "Reckless words pierce like a sword," (12:18) and "The tongue that brings healing is a tree of life." (15:4)
I was speaking about God's grace at a large convention recently and when I stepped off the stage, guess who was waiting for me? Ken. I kid you not. He gave me a bear hug until my ribs squeaked. There were tears streaming down his face. Ten minutes later Larry elbowed his way through a group of people and opened his arms. I kid you not. Tears were in his eyes. They were in mine too. The three of us standing together. Amazed by grace. On even ground at the foot of the cross.
"Isn't God good?" said Ken, taking my right hand and squeezing it hard. "How's the thumb?" he asked. "Never better," I said. "Never better."
