"You're going to get a surprise," classmates kept telling Norman Reedus.
It was his first year of junior high, in Florida, and he was the new kid. He'd bounced around to a lot of schools, and his family didn't have much money, which made him stick out. Everyone in school wore the same cool pair of Nike high-tops, for example, but Reedus wore a beat-up pair of soccer cleats with a hole in the toe. Now the other kids were talking about a surprise-never a good sign.
At lunch, it happened: The kids gathered around Reedus as he sat at a table. One girl emerged, box in hand, with a bow on top. The kids cooed in unison. Reedus was nervous, but he opened it: Inside was a pair of Nike high-tops, the same as everyone else's. It was a gift. So he could fit in.
"I was mortified,” he recalls now, at age 53, sitting in a rural Georgia parking lot near where he's filming the final season of AMC's The Walking Dead. “I loved my soccer cleats with the hole in the toe. I thought they were awesome. And I never wore the Nikes. I never put them on. I gave them away."
Reedus pauses. “I don't know why I just thought of that story,” he says.
But I have a guess.
The kid with the beat-up soccer cleats grew up into an adult who identifies with rough edges. He is fascinated by the grotesque; he photographs roadkill, and once made a statue of himself in a box full of bugs and rats for an art museum. He has a lot of stories about hanging out with delinquents. He's gotten into a lot of fights. “I don't like nose jobs; I like people with an interesting nose,” he says.
Bu hikaye Entrepreneur dergisinin April - May 2022 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye Entrepreneur dergisinin April - May 2022 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
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