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known and honored for its disease transmitting mosquito population, a deadly type of encephalitis is named after L: LACV. I removed pen and scientific journal from jacket pocket and sketched the long, thin, serrated proboscis of a female treehole mosquito, blood dripping from its sharp point. I never felt at home in L, never a part of L. Trapped, cornered, even as early as elementary school all I wanted was to get away, to climb over the surrounding bluffs, swim across the river and escape to the wider world. Always the outsider, I was different somehow, exceptional in some unknown yet important way. I possessed a secret inner strength lacking in others, and it made me stand out. But was I really that unique? Weak, a coward, afraid to defend myself and strike the first blow I turned my back and took the lashes and the abuse, and then I ran, forever the coward, shivering in the night afraid and alone. The “good children of L” seemed to sense this too, the mean, vicious, stupid, bullying children of L, the bourgeois beneficiaries, the happy children of L. I kept away from the children of L, avoided them as much as possible. Strangely enough this seemed to draw them to me, attracted them to me, making me a person of interest, an object of curiosity. They followed me wherever I went, chased me, hunted me, and when finally catching me to show their respect, acknowledge my superiority, they beat me and bullied me—after school, before school, before church, after Sunday School, it did not really matter where or when, once caught, cornered and captured I was honored, my difference celebrated, and I was beaten. I was not an easy child to raise; no, I could indeed be difficult, introspective, moody, more than a little self-centered. I liked to be alone, valued my own company, and did not take easily to strangers. I could not be bothered to say hello to acquaintances, family friends or neighbors encountered on the streets or in the aisles at the corner grocery store. Oftentimes people didn’t make an impression on me. It’s as if I didn’t see them, as if they didn’t even exist, mother said repeatedly. “It’s as if you think yourself better than them somehow,” mother scolded. “You can’t even say hello, or wave, or smile, as if neighborly courtesy and social niceties are beneath you,” she said