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The other kids made Chris cry. Picked on him. Called him names. Beat him up. He was an awkward, overgrown mama's boy from a Christian elementary school where all the children wore starched white shirts and pea-green pants. And in that part of Detroit, that was enough to make Chris Webber an insult magnet for most of the boys in the 'hood.
They hardly noticed how fast Chris was growing or improving. They weren't even impressed when as an eighth-grader in one game he got 64 points and 15 dunks. All they knew was that Doris Webber, a teacher, was enrolling her son in some namby-pamby private academy with a name that made it sound like a nursery school, Country Day, out there in the suburbs with the rich folks, instead of at regular old Southwestern High with everybody else.
Mama was out shopping for gold-buttoned blazers and neckties. Dad was going off to work at General Motors to brag on his son. But Chris, Chris was in agony. Country Day? Country Day? They can't do this to me, he thought. Can't put me in some preppie school.
He begged his parents to reconsider.
You're going, they said.
He threatened to run away from home.
You're going, they said.
So, he hatched one more scheme. Country Day required aptitude tests. Prospective students took a four-hour exam. Here, Chris realized, here's my chance. When the testing began, he picked up his pencil and played tick-tack-toe. Then he put down his head and took a nap. Waking up, he saw that two hours had been killed. Still two more to go. Chris was bored but no longer sleepy. So he checked out the first test question and answered it. Then the second.
A few days later, his mother got a call.
"Mrs. Webber, your son did fine on the test, but he only finished half."