When I was nine, there was a kid in my class who had a severe facial tic. It looked like he was winking at you, all the time, for no apparent reason. Due to my firm and youthful belief in the parental phrase, “Stop making that face or it’ll get stuck that way,” I naturally assumed that the expression was something he’d been doing repeatedly, on purpose, until it stuck.

That was when I decided that if I was accidentally saddled with a recurring facial stutter, mine wasn’t going to be confusing and vaguely suggestive. My facial tic was going to be AWESOME.

So, I started practicing Samantha’s magical nose wiggle from the TV show, Bewitched. I worked on perfecting my new tic morning, noon and night, concentrating on my little face in the mirror until I got it just right, lips twitching back and forth over and over until it felt as natural as a weird and mildly offensive hobby possibly could for a nine-year-old.

Anyway, that’s the story of how my parents once spent an entire month thinking I might have Tourette’s Syndrome.