1. Red Cards

First off, let me say this: I didn't have a bad childhood. I cannot find fault with my parents in any way. If I tell you about my early life, what I'm referring to is what it felt like for me, not whether my folks did a good job or not. That is not what this is about. I love my parents more than anything else and spend as much time as possible with them. Family is after all one of the most important things to me.

Nevertheless, I was often miserable on the campground on which I grew up.

I was my mom's favorite, the youngest of three. As a kid I saw my father as a matter-of-fact type of person, with little emotion. He was also on the road a lot. My mother compensated for it by coddling me twice as much. My brother is ten years my senior and my sister six. Because there was such an age gap between us, we weren't that close. My sister had to watch over me a lot when I was small, and she hated it. We fought often, and she was physically stronger than me of course. One time she hit me full force on my bare back with a needle brush, so that I looked like a beginner in a fakir club on training day. Suffice it to say that it wasn't exactly cozy at our home.

In general, I seemed to be taking beatings from all sides. Socially, I found myself left to my own devices. I didn't have a big brother around since he was too old, nor did I have a best friend with whom to ally myself. Why didn't I have friends? Because I had red hair, I was chubby and had pimples. And because I had no interest in having other redheaded, chubby and pimply kids as my friends either. I didn't want to belong to the outsiders. And yet, I had been dealt the card of the outsider. Bad luck.

I was teased throughout my early years. They called me "Chub" or "Redhead." And when there was something happening on the campground, when something broke or someone complained-it was Limbeck's fault.

Frank was usually the ringleader. Oh, before I go any further, let me say that whenever I tell you a story, it's something that actually happened. The only thing I've altered are the names. I don't intend to expose anyone here, let me make that clear. Therefore, I'm leaving out all last names and inventing first names, except of course when it concerns well-known personalities.

Anyway, this Frank kid had claimed me as his personal chump and scapegoat. One time we were out at five in the morning dismantling the miniature golf course and throwing the pieces in the lake. Naturally I took part; I was also petulant and rowdy and had to let off steam somewhere. Frank was also there. As the policeman who owned a trailer on the campground dragged us in front of our parents by the scruff of the neck, Frank's father was so certain that I was the usual suspect that he smacked me right then and there.

Thank God my father was there at the time and intervened, "If anybody smacks my son, it's going to be me!" You wouldn't believe how important these words were to me. Because that's exactly what I wanted: for my father to set boundaries for me.

Alas, this hardly ever happened because I never really felt his presence. He was self-employed and always on the go. He would come home at seven-thirty in the evening, we would have dinner, then watch the news, and then it was off to bed. Having conversations with him, doing things together-I never actually saw any of that. At least that's how I perceived things.

He was a loner and an outsider. On the campground you had to be sociable in order to belong; there was constant partying everywhere. My father kept his distance and hardly drank any alcohol, at most a beer. On campgrounds where everyone is drunk every weekend, drink one beer and you're left on the sidelines.

As a consequence, I also became a loner and an outsider-just in my age group. Even if I wanted something else entirely. At home I played on my own: I could spend hours building Lego cities and airfields. In the evenings we would watch TV. On Saturdays, there was a short religious broadcast followed by a cowboy movie. Everyone was allowed to see it, even the kids in my clique would rave about it on Sundays. I, on the other hand, had to go to bed. And the Saturday night when, by some off-chance, I was allowed to watch the western, I fell asleep within the first five minutes. That was typical.

A Losing Battle

There were lots of Turkish students at my school. One of them was named Erkan and was the leader because he was the strongest. He beat me up on a regular basis. He always seemed to find a reason to. It was obviously good for his ego. Thinking back, it's astounding how many beatings I took week in and week out. One time, in my role as the neighborhood piñata, I got thrown back first into the front window of a flower shop. I could have gotten very seriously cut up, in fact I could have died.

Today, of course, all of this still exists. From what I know, kids who are in the position that we were once in are taken by droves into the custody of child protective services. When we were kids, that was just the way of the world and nobody batted an eyelid.

When my testosterone levels began to skyrocket, redirecting my desires, girls wanted nothing to do with me. I might as well have been thin air for them. But I was also a bastard: Because my self-esteem was about as big as an ant, I vented my frustrations on girls. It was also a way of reaching out. I teased them and even picked arguments with them. How pathetic was that! My father, our family ambassador, was often forced to go to my school because of it. I acted like a loser-and that's fitting, because I was a loser.

Losers steal, for instance. And I stole. There was a small shop in the country that sold gardening tools, flowers, fishing equipment and the like. Frank got such a kick out of egging me on. And I was a faithful accomplice, of course, because I wanted to belong. I would steal anything to hand and stuff it into my fishing boots, and get promptly caught and escorted home by the police. I couldn't even steal properly, so I decided to leave it be.

I couldn't kick a ball either. And if you grew up in the Ruhr Valley, that was bad news. Our entire school supported the legendary team Schalke 04, and we were practically next door to the soccer stadium, which today has been partially torn down and serves as a training ground. In those days it was our temple. Soccer in the Ruhr area is like a religion. At every given opportunity, we used a tennis ball to initiate the ritual that was our street soccer session. On each occasion the two strongest players would choose the ones they wanted for their team. Needless to say, I was always picked last. And "picked" is a big word-I was the last one left. A wretched feeling.

Most of my teachers, too, treated me like dirt. On Fridays our math teacher would join us for lunch in the cafeteria. On this occasion there was chicken. Whereas at home we would eat chicken with our hands, our math teacher insisted we use our knife and fork. I didn't know how, and so I got into trouble yet again. Or rather, my parents got hassled for it. As if the quality of one's upbringing depended on whether one followed the book of etiquette.

My father, on yet another diplomatic mission, concluded the summit conference having secured my permission to eat with my fingers whenever there was chicken on the menu, just like I did at home. What a farce.

The music professor was a clown in a checkered suit and a bow tie. The type that at forty still lives at home with his mother. (If you're the type who at forty lives at home with his mother, move out for God's sake!) One day I had to get up and sing in front of the class. My teacher knew that both my brother and my sister were very musical. Surprisingly, that didn't help me at all. My performance was an absolute train wreck. And the professor had achieved his goal. The worst part of it was his pitying tone, "Oh, Martin, go back to your seat. You're just not cut out for music. That's just the way it is-"

That's how deep-seated beliefs are born. "You're not cut out for music." Bull's-eye. Hit and sunk. I internalized this and for nearly my entire life I actually believed that I was not musical. Simply because a bad teacher did not live up to his responsibility and found it necessary to make a weak student even weaker.

There was a similar case with my German teacher, a man with long hair and a mustache. He was our homeroom teacher and seemed to think he presided over the path our lives would take. One time he called my father in because I was getting bad grades. He said, "Mr. Limbeck, your boy will NEVER amount to anything!"

That hurt. Think about it for a second: how aggressive and spiteful that was. How abjectly petty, how bitter about your own failures you would have to be in order to humiliate in this manner an already insecure boy in the throes of puberty.

And because a good portion of the teachers belittled me, I had no standing among my classmates either. That is how leadership works, for good or bad.

A kid once said to me, "I'll bet you can't eat a piece of bread while I'm holding it." Dope that I was, I saw no particular problem and accepted the challenge. A circle of leering kids formed around me, and the boy in question proceeded to pull his pants down and stuck the piece of bread between his bare butt cheeks. "Eat up, Limbeck!"

Now you know what my role in society used to be.

There was one guy on the campground whom I admired; his name was Henry. His father had his own shop, selling coal and oil, which meant that Henry had money. He had...