David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

under her desk and rolled her chair in
and started kicking me. So I pushed the
chair back, hit her in the face, and
walked out. I was in fourth grade.”
He called that period in his life “the
ugly years.” His parents didn’t know
what to do. “It was probably the most
frustrating part of my life, which is
saying a lot.” He went on: “Because it
wasn’t that I wasn’t trying. I was
working really, really hard, and no one
understood that part of the equation.
They literally thought that I was
conscientiously making decisions to be a
disruptive kid, to not learn, to hold the
class back. You know what it’s like,
you’re a six- or seven- or eight-year-old
kid, and you’re in a public school