I was bullied pretty much consistently from 1st grade through 12th.
Here is my narrative about this.
I taught myself my numbers and letters from little blocks when I was about 2 years old.
I taught myself to read when I was 3.
Boy, was my grandfather proud when I read out loud, “‘F’ ‘O’ ‘R’ ‘D’, that spells Ford, Granddaddy!”
I know children learn to read much earlier now.
This was before that was normal. We are talking the middle of the 20th century.
By the time I was in 1st grade I was reading at a 7th grade level.
So, I was REALLY excited to be going to school because I wanted to learn everything and grow up and be a scientist.
I showed up in Mrs. Hick’s class and saw the letters of the alphabet across the top of the blackboard and was pleased to see my old friends there.
And a few weeks went by, and all we were doing was coloring inside the lines and not eating library paste. You know, the same thing we were taught in kindergarten.
Anyway, one day Mrs. Hicks (who was in her last year of service as a teacher, ready to retire and probably tired of the whole thing) got us all to take our chairs into a circle and THEN (finally!) brought out a stack of books. She passed them out and I was surprised to see that the cover was blank. But, I eagerly opened the book and found a blank page. Confused, I went to the next page and eventually found a picture of two little kids (a boy and a girl) walking up a hill with balloons.
So, I sat in the circle and waited to see what my teacher wanted me to do.
She asked the first kid in the circle to describe was she saw.
She replied, “I see two children walking up a hill”.
And so it went, with each of us describing different aspects of the picture.
I was maybe 5th or 6th in the circle as it came around, and by that time, I would just be repeating what the others had said.
But, fortunately (or so I thought) there was a copyright notice at the bottom of the page.
Therefore when it came to me, I read out loud and proudly, “Copyright 1954, Harcourt, Brace and Company.”
The strangest thing happened then.
Mrs Hicks looked at me terribly sternly and slammed shut her book and then said, “You children stay here. I will be back!” Then she stomped out of the room. I found out later from my parents that she had actually gone to the principal and demanded to know why there was a **midget **in her first grade classroom!
Now, mind you, the school was eventually pleased to have a ‘reading prodigy’ in their classes, and I was enlisted to help the 1st and 2nd graders in their reading.
Yes, this helped me immensely in fitting in with my peers.
hahahahahahahaha Oh, my goodness, it didn’t.
It left me indelibly stained as THE outsider.
You see, in my town, there were 32 children in that 1st grade class, and of them 17 graduated high school with me. That core group was the ‘cool kids’ and they knew me only as the weird one, the midget, the martian.
It wasn’t until I went to college that I could even date.
Stuffed into a locker. Yep, been there. I am only happy I knew the way to get myself back out (there is a release mechanism on the inside of the lock… and I had read about it (heh heh heh)) and that at 5"8’ I could fit in there without damage.
Beaten to a pulp? Yep, been there. Multiple times.
I am terribly myopic and have worn glasses since I was 7 (or 6, according to my mother). I actually wore ‘athletic glasses’ that could be beaten without breaking after having had one of my other normal frames driven into my eyebrows. If you look carefully, you can still see the scars.
But, the internal scars still remain quite clearly in my memory.
That should be obvious after this little screed.
One of my minor triumphs was when I went to college.
I met one of the really ‘cool’ girls who was actually a cheerleader in high school and dated her for a few weeks. As in dating her, I mean I had sex with her. Many times.
She apologized for what the ‘cool cabal’ had done as best she could.
She apologized quite nicely, and it helped heal my psyche.
I went on to be quite the ladies’ man and haven’t looked back since.
Except, of course, when I tell this tale.
I married the girl of my dreams, so it went well eventually.