Darleen Bailey Beard
Growing up in the 1960s in Levittown, Pennsylvania, I was a foot taller than all my friends. My nickname was "Chicken Legs." I was terribly shy. And more than anything, I wanted to be good at something, but I had no idea what my "something" would be.
Like most kids, I tried the usual -- pressing leaves in dictionaries, pogo-stick jumping, raising"sea monkeys," and selling Girl Scout cookies. I also tried the unusual -- riding my bicycle with a bag over my head, convincing the neighbor kids to eat dryer lint by telling them it was cotton candy, kissing frogs, and collecting used Band-Aids.
Then, in fifth grade, at Herbert Hoover Elementary School, Mrs. Jacqui Schickling entered my life and introduced me to a whole new world -- writing. My classmates and I started a school newspaper called
The Hoover Hotline. We wrote book reports, pen-pal letters, and stories with our spelling words. When Mrs. Schickling asked me to stand in front of the class and read my stories, I s
