![]() I liked some older boys who had been in the school play. ![]() So I was humiliated when people started ribbing me for “liking” Carl. But in that first wave of grown-up sexual attraction, “liking” somebody is shameful, gross, something you get teased for. I don’t know why people hate him.”ĭo you remember being about ten years old, when children first start teasing one another for “liking” someone?Īt just a little older, being a couple with someone becomes a goal. Afterwards, somebody asked me how the lunch date had gone, and instead of expressing revulsion I’d said “He’s just a boy. By the luck of the draw, I ended up exchanging my cream cheese bagel with Carl’s Lunchable and chatting with him for fifteen tense minutes. Adams drew names out of a hat so we could be assigned to exchange lunches and have a special meal with a randomly chosen new friend. Or maybe it was the fact that we were both unlovable. Maybe it was our close physical proximity that started the rumor that Carl and I “liked” each other. He, despised, doing nothing unusual, but still treated like a circus freak. His name was close to mine in the alphabet, so we often sat at desks side by side– me, despised, drawing elaborate floor plans for fairy tale castles and getting ink on my fingers and wrist. When he dared to ask a question, the class jeered. When he read aloud in class, he was laughed at. ![]() The girls who didn’t have time for boys took extra time to express their disdain. The boys who were normally reasonable or kind pushed him away with “Shut up, Carl!” or “Get lost, Carl, your whole family’s ugly.” The girls who openly flirted with most of the boys made disgusted faces as he walked by. There was no reason for everyone to despise Carl, but they did. He wasn’t very tidy and he didn’t smell too nice, but no boys in the third and fourth grade were clean. He was a little tall and plump for his age, but nothing like the tallest or fattest boy in class. He did his reading in the expected monotone. He had no imagination he played football with the other boys at recess. I picked wildflowers to make magical potions and spent the rest of the school day with my hands smelling like wild onion. ![]() I liked to read Tolkien and wander around the edge of the playground, talking to trees. I was needlessly theatrical and did all the voices when it was my turn to read aloud. I was fun to tease because I melted down at the drop of a hat. I was annoying because I so easily got indignant and blurted out what I was thinking, no matter the consequences. I always had stomach aches and a runny nose because of my undiagnosed wheat sensitivity. I was fat, ugly, and eccentric I was neuro-atypical before anybody labeled problem children as neuro-atypical. But at least we weren’t at a public school where we might not have been taught our catechism.Īt Our Lady of Peace, there was a boy. After I left Our Lady of Peace I had nightmares about the place for years. There was also a robust culture of shunning, silent treatment and humiliation among the girls, which was, if anything, worse. And that was just the overt violence and teasing, mostly by boys. Then they’d release us back onto the playground, where the abuse would continue unabated until we got caught again. If they caught a group of children engaging in any kind of fight, they would punish both parties, making both of us “sit out” on the playground or stay in at recess until we’d hashed out our differences with a talk. The bullies would tease and call names and sometimes physically assault the socially undesirable children like me, and the cold fish of a principal and the adult volunteers who patrolled the playground would make it worse. ![]() Our Lady of Peace was infested with bullies, as I’ve mentioned several times before. Our Lady of Peace is the name of the horrible parish school I attended in Columbus, from third grade until halfway through fifth when I had my nervous breakdown and was homeschooled. I thought about Our Lady of Peace again, the other day. ![]()
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