You are very talented

I'm speechless.

Really, I am.

Someone thinks I am talented. I mean, someone doesn't just think I am funny, they think I am talented.

Wait, they didn't say anything about being funny. I take that back. They think I am talented.

I've waited my whole life for someone to say that to me. I trained for 16 years on the high wire, carrying my entire family balanced on my shoulders, never having a net.

I went through 13 families in those 16 years and I still never got any recognition. None of my foster mothers ever said I was talented. My foster fathers only threatened to beat me if I didn't put them down, on the ground, right away.

And after I was banned from the circus, after I pissed off Siegfried & Roy, I turned to jumping over cars and buses with my bicycle. I was in dire straits during those years. Didn't have money to buy a petrol-powered bike, so instead I just carried the cans of petrol on my bike as I pedaled as hard as I could up and over the ramp, often making it over 2 or 3 cars before crashing down, and most often exploding in a ball of flame I was never quite dressed for.

Not once did the cops or the paramedics tell me I was talented. They said I was arrested and that I had the right to remain silent, but never anything about talent. And it was heartbreaking. I almost gave up my running long jump of the Grand Canyon, but I was already committed to it. My signature is my oath and though my scoutmaster wouldn't give me my Eagle badge because I couldn't remember a single thing I was supposed to, he wouldn't let me get out of entertaining the entire troop with the jump.

That's all in days gone by now. I don't get out much to do anything more than pick up the paper on the doorstep. There's certainly no praise involved with that. No talent anyways.

But I will always cherish this moment, this time when someone said I was talented.

Thank you.