BEFORE being detained in Russia and eventually being exchanged in a prisoner swap for the notorious criminal known as “The Merchant of Death”, women’s basketball star Brittney Yevette Griner was born on October 18th, 1990 in the city of Houston, Texas. For the most part, Britney’s upbringing was relatively ordinary as the youngest of four children being raised by a homemaker and a police officer. But sooner rather than later it became clear to Griner, as well as everyone else, that she was far from what most people would consider to be ordinary. In the pages of her memoir, “In My Skin”. Brittney knew from an early age that she was attracted to girls -- and because that didn’t fit in with the preconceived notion that many people had back then for girls attending middle-school, she was often taunted and referred to as a boy. The worst times came in Seventh Grade and at the end of far too many school days, Brittney would retire to her room to cry and question why she was even alive in the first place.