I grew up knowing I was different, and I hated it. I was born with a cleft   lip, and when I started to go to school, my classmates were constantly laughing at me. I couldn't even blow up a balloon. When my classmates asked, "What happened to your lip?" I'd tell them that I'd fallen as a baby and cut it on a piece of glass. Somehow it seemed more acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different. Then I entered the second grade, and Mrs. Leonard's class. She was round and pretty. Everyone loves her. But no one came to love her more than I did. And for a special reason. The time came for the yearly "hearing tests". I was nearly unable to hear anything out of one ear. So I cheated. I had learned to watch other children and raised my hand when they did during group testing. The "whisper test" required a different trick: each child would go to the door of the classroom, turn sideways and cover one ear with a finger. And the teacher would say something very quietly from her desk, which the child would repeat. Then the same thing was done for the other ear. Nobody checked to see how tightly the untested ear was being covered, so I pretended to cover mine. My turn came. I turned my bad ear to her, covering the other ear with my finger, and then gently backed my finger out enough to be able to hear. I waited, and then heard the words that God had surely put into her mouth; seven words that changed my life forever. Mrs. Leonard, the pretty teacher I loved, said softly, "I wish you were my little girl." The author's classmates were always laughing at her because she   _  .
was born different went to school at an old age could not blow up a balloon failed to win her teacher's love