title: Advice My Parents Gave Me: and Other Lessons I Learned from My Mistakes
author:  Rodolfo Costa 
description: "409 thought-provoking ideas.Unassuming in its presentation, <i>Advice My Parents Gave Me...</i> is a reminder to readers not to judge something based on its appearance but rather on its content. --Hartford Books Examiner, John Valeri
zlib_text: CHAPTER ONE
  
  School and Football
  
  I was born an idiot - but I'm cleverer than people think. I can think things
  OK, but when I have to say them or write them down, sometimes they come out
  all wrong. When I was born, my Mom named me Forrest. My daddy died just after
  I was born. He worked on the ships. One day a big box of bananas fell down on
  my daddy and killed him.
  
  I don't like bananas much. Only banana cake. I like that all right.
  
  At first when I was growing up, I played with everybody. But then some boys
  hit me, and my Mom didn't want me to play with them again. I tried to play
  with girls, but they all ran away from me.
  
  I went to an ordinary school for a year. Then the children started laughing
  and running away from me. But one girl, Jenny Curran, didn't run away, and
  sometimes she walked home with me. She was nice.
  
  Then they put me into another kind of school, and there were some strange boys
  there. Some couldn't eat or go to the toilet without help. I stayed in that
  school for 