Embarrassed and shocked, I went home. Now, at the age of 13, I was starting to distance myself from my mother. I certainly wasn’t going to tell her about my humiliating library confrontation. But the librarian had called her. She was a good woman who had gotten to know me and she enjoyed encouraging my reading habits. I’m sure she called out of a genuine concern for my impressionable and voracious mind. But my mother’s response changed my life.