Believe it or don't, I used to be painfully shy. I missed being voted the quietest in my grade by only three votes. (Ronnie Frost, you win!) I was also one of the shortest kids in my grade. It was only when Wayne Jackson moved to town that I became just the quiet kid and not the short, quiet kid who liked to draw and daydream and was easy to pick on. That's where the story starts.
In grade school I was picked on because I was short. I got called "Shrimp" a lot by the grade school bullies. I was the shortest kid, and my best friend at the time was, well, fat. And he stuttered. We were prime targets for getting picked on. We were the Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid's of bullydom. I never had a better friend than Roy though throughout grade school. His dad made us wooden swords and shields and we played together after school every day. Playing with swords. More fodder for the bully cannon.
When I was in junior high, the grade school bullies had turned older, but I was still a prime target. I would get teased and picked on in the hallways daily. One day I had had enough, and I just blurted out something to shock them and get them off my back. Little did I know that what I uttered then would change my life. I said "I am an alien from the planet Quazar and I like to sit upside down in my chair at home and think about my home planet out there in space." Something like that. well, it worked. Sort of. They now thought I was too weird to pick on. But they began calling me Quazar. Another name to insult me with. But at least the physical bullying stopped.
In high school the name still followed me, but I met some great friends. I wrote about them in my last post, "The Magic of Friendship." They shortened the name to QZ, and called me Quay. "Hey, Quay!" They would shout down the hallway at me. When I would leave I began saying 'Stay the Quay Way!" What had begun as an insult had become something I was proud of, something I embraced. I was Quay, and I had friends, and they helped me accept myself and let me be the fun loving, daydreaming, quirky person I always was but was afraid to show it. What started out as something meant to harm me had become something good.
A quay is a wharf. It is a place for the loading and unloading of ships.
A quasar is an interstellar object that emits immense amounts of energy and light.
I am Quay. I am a bundle of creative energy and imaginative light that loads up dream magic and unloads it on anyone and everyone who will listen.
The Quay Way is the way of staying forever young-mind, body, and spirit.
How do you stay forever young? And what moment in your life did you find the dream magic that changed you forever? Have you found it?
I hope you do.
Stay the Quay Way, my quaylings. Always.
~Quay~
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