I went to work at the pool hall one afternoon, straight from school. Ol’ Jim and Ol’ Bill were there, and they could tell I was despondent. I was 13 years old and had just got my first pair of glasses. I wanted a girlfriend awfully bad at that time and those glasses made me uglier than I had ever been. One of the older girls called me ‘four eyes. Now ‘the pool hall kid’ wasn’t my only nickname. Now I was gonna be called the “four-eyed pool hall kid”. I told my old friends there on the front bench that I was thinking on quitting school and just staying there in the pool hall forever. Ol’ Bill asked what brought that on and I told him. I was born too ugly to ever get a girlfriend and now I was uglier because of those glasses.
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