I was born with the kind of mind that builds worlds. Not metaphorically—I mean literally. I built entire galaxies from couch cushions and lamp poles. I’d wrap furniture in blankets, balance pillows across table legs, and declare a new launch pad. Once, my Aunt Joanne asked what I was building. Without hesitation I said, “A spaceship.” Other kids built forts. I left Earth entirely.

This wasn’t just play—it was how I lived. My imagination was a sanctuary. It gave shape to a world that felt both exciting and safe. There were no misunderstandings in my inner universe. No confusion. No noise I couldn’t tune out. In there, everything made sense.

We lived in South Boston back then, in a modest duplex owned by my grandfather. My parents, sister, and I lived upstairs. Downstairs lived my Aunt Teresa, Uncle Mark, and, eventually, their daughters Bianca and Alessandra. The backyard, typical for Southie, was small—just a little patch of city earth—but my mother turned it into a garden. Tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, and a Sicilian zucchini called cucuzza grew in neatly lined rows. She used them to make tenerumi, a delicate soup from zucchini leaves and vines. My mother had been born in Sicily. She came to the U.S. as a child, along with her sister Lina, when my grandparents immigrated in their thirties. Everything around me—our language, our food, our Sunday traditions—was steeped in old-world Sicilian style.

I didn’t just have an imagination—I had a universe inside me. My mind was alive with images, stories, rhythms. I loved drawing, especially one recurring picture: two palm trees crossing in front of a sunset, with the word Hawaii written in large, decorative letters. I drew it constantly. When my cousins tried to copy it, I got upset. It wasn’t just a picture—it was my work of art. Not in the possessive way most kids hoard toys, but in the way an artist feels connected to their first vision.

That creative streak wasn’t confined to paper. I felt drawn to music, rhythm, storytelling, anything expressive. I absorbed movies like scripture, appreciated color like emotion, and found magic in the way art could make you feel. I wasn’t taught to love the arts—I just did. They were my language.

But while my imagination was rich, my sense of social timing… wasn’t. I rarely noticed the invisible rules everyone else seemed to follow. I didn’t mean to interrupt, I just didn’t know I was doing it. Like the time during preschool chorus, when I spotted my baby cousin Bianca in the audience. I left my place mid-performance, walked up to Miss Julie, my favorite teacher, and tapped her excitedly.

“Miss Julie! Miss Julie! Look—it’s Bianca!”

All the kids were singing. All eyes were on the stage. But I didn’t understand why that should stop me from sharing something important. Bianca was in the room. That was reason enough.

My Aunt Teresa still tells another story from that time. One day, while walking down the street, I noticed a mess on the sidewalk. I stopped, pointed, and said:

“A-a-a-auntie Teresa, look at the cat poop that the dog did.”

I had a stutter back then. I mixed things up. Words didn’t always come out in the right order, or with the expected meaning. People found it funny, endearing, or strange. But it all made sense in my head. I wasn’t trying to be weird—I was just being me.

Everyone said I was “in my own world.” And eventually, they gave that world a name: TJ Time. That’s what they called it when I disappeared into my thoughts or missed a cue or said something out of sync. “He’s just in TJ Time again.”

But TJ Time wasn’t nonsense. It was peace. It was color. It was movement and music and pattern and depth. It was where I felt whole. Understood. Alive.

The world had a different clock—and it didn’t run on mine.