(3/12) “We did notice certain changes as the year went on. Ms. DiCo’s voice got deeper a
(3/12) “We did notice certain changes as the year went on. Ms. DiCo’s voice got deeper and deeper. Her hair got shorter and shorter. But I didn’t think much of it. To be honest I wasn’t thinking much about Ms. DiCo at all. She was white, from Manhattan. She’d gone to Yale. I just assumed she didn’t have any problems. But one morning Ms. DiCo came into class with a fresh cut, and a full suit. She seemed nervous. She walked up to the front of the room, and said: ‘This is who I am. And I hope you’ll accept me. You don’t have to call me Mr. DiCo. But I’d prefer if you don’t call me Ms. DiCo. Just call me DiCo.’ Even today I thank God that DiCo was the first person I met who was transgender. This was the only person who really loved and understood me. DiCo could have told me he was a dinosaur, and I’d be like: ‘That’s cool. Just stay DiCo.’ And the rest of the team felt the same way. A couple of the seniors gave him a hug, but then we just got back to debate. The Harvard Tournament was coming up, and it was the biggest thing we did all year. We had to sell chocolate bars just to get there. We got to stay in a hotel for three nights. It was a big deal. The topic for this year’s tournament was: ‘Should juvenile defenders be tried as adults?’ DiCo was smiling at me when he hung the topic up on the wall. He knew about my situation with Koreh. I think he thought that this would be the tournament that finally got me to focus. I started coming in early each day so we could work on my speech together. We went through a big stack of articles. We memorized the facts and statistics. And we worked on weaving in my personal story. During practice DiCo kept pushing me to the front of the class, and I destroyed. I had my speech down. I even cried a couple times, because I loved Koreh. And I wanted to prove it wasn’t fair what happened to him. At one point DiCo even got up to debate me, which never happens. And he demolishes me. I’m stuttering, I’m struggling. It was like practicing against Tom Brady, and it pissed me off. I was like: ‘Why is DiCo doing this to me?’ But after class he pulled me aside, and said: ‘You could be the first kid I’ve had that wins at Harvard.’” -- source link