My grandson asked my wife if he was cute, She said he was, and very cute he was, And it felt like a punch straight to my gut, But not for him, or her, but just because I'd never heard those words when I was young, And wouldn't have had the nerve to ask somehow: "Attention-seeking" is what that was called, And so, I grew up ugly Just Like Now
On a practical note I didn’t need any reassurance whether or not I was cute, or clever, or good, or bad (and there begins a poem) I just was, and I was content in not knowing!
Yeah, I think you had to be made fun of for how you looked for this all to make sense. I was, so it does to me. But I envy you never having had these type of thoughts.