and at school. I was definitely different to other children but my mother insisted that Iattendanormalschoolandnotaspecialschoolforpeoplelikeme.Besides, there are a few special schools for disabled people because we are a minority in society. My mother also felt that attending a normal school would make me adapt easily to mainstream society. Shewantedmetofeelthesameasothers. She encouraged me to see myself as no different to others. But sometimes it felt like she was patronising me – just making me feel good about myself because I was her child. I am not always sure if it is healthy to take a disabled child to a normal school. But thanks to my mother’s support, I have been a team leader of many so-called normal people since my teenage years, when she forced me to head a musical group from her small storeroom. I was to later find myself teaming up with friends to head a community drama group. I have since had privileges of supervising so-called normal people in various professional environments with much ease. Hence, I hug my mother with a tearful heart as I write these words. I hope every parent who has a disable,d or so-called “abnormal”, child willtakecounsel.Itmaynothavebeen easy. Like I said, when I was in lower grades there was no playing during school breaks for me, and I had to watch other children racing around like flies in a room full of slaughtered animal carcasses. But I was being trained to defy the odds *This is an adapted extract from Simphiwe Mkhize’s unpublished memoirs called Anger Mismanaged