The whispers gave way to slurs.

"Hey, where you going, bin Laden?" one student hollered.

"What's that tennis ball doing on your head?" another sniped.

Anoop Kochar, who will graduate with honors from Clover Hill High School on Thursday, never flinched. Not to "towel head" or to the curious stares. Instead, he used the incidents as opportunities to educate his classmates about his faith.

"I told them, 'It's not a tennis ball, it's my hair,'" said Anoop, who will enter the College of William and Mary in the fall. "Usually, once you confront them in an adult fashion, they say they are sorry." [Link]