I'm dyslexic, although they didn't have a word for it when I was in grade school. The teachers said I had 'word blindness.'
It's all chaos and the house is occasionally filthy but I get to stand at the school gates. Writers are so lucky to have that flexibility.
I arrived at school pensive, introverted, and not very sporty, so magic became a place of mystery and intrigue, an escape for my boyish mind.
I was always kind of a loudmouth and a class clown, and that kind of led to doing all the school plays and trying out all kinds of different stuff.
I didn't do particularly well with girls at school. I was very shy. I'm not saying that was the only reason I didn't do well with them, but I just didn't.
I grew up in Queens and New Jersey. I started doing children's theater when I was seven to get out of school because I didn't fit in.
Everything has changed. When I was at school and was told I had better learn English, I said: What for? The English are a hell of a long way away!
My world was a community ballet school, a marching band, my two sisters and my girlfriends. I played saxophone in the band and was a bit nerdy.
As a boy in school, I already had the drive to be No. 1. If I achieve my goals, OK, but if not, I always ask why and try to rectify myself.
My brother was an improviser. He's now a lobbyist, but he used to perform improv in the city when he was in high school, and one of the funniest guys I know to this day.
How many more school shootings do we need before we start talking about this as a social problem, and not merely a random collection of isolated incidents?
Our nation's oldest sin and deepest crime is the isolation of minority children - black children, in particular - in schools that are not only segregated but shamefully unequal.
We need to reform our school lunch programs. We need to get healthy items into the vending machines.
I was a busy kid in high school - a little bit of an overachiever, I guess. Prom king was kind of silly, but the rest of the stuff was important to me.
In my neighborhood in Springfield, Ohio, there were a lot of young kids. We all played tackle football after school, but I knew very early on that I was not an athlete.
If you were to look back at me as a school kid you'd see a very quiet little church mouse kind of character.
My father was in Congress when I was born. He was mayor my whole life from when I was in grade school - first grade - to when I went away to college.
My teacher told me I'd never amount to anything. I left high school at 15, after one year. But my real teachers were all the people around me. And I was a good listener.
I think when your imagination goes to work, and when you're first bullied, you feel like you're going to die. School becomes a war zone, and you can't function.
People say, 'I know you, don't I?' And they expect me to say I know them from their daughter's school or something - they can't place me. And I love that. Long may it last.
Liesel Meminger: Franz Deutscher doesn't sound very smart. Rudy Steiner: He's the dumbest kid in school. But he shaves.
