Caterwauling

This is one of those entries that I’m going to write and I’m never, ever going to want to read it again. Either that, or I’m going to edit it and wonder what everyone else is thinking when they read it, if they indeed can sit through an entry about where an emotional scar came from.

Via Tiff a WaPo article about a study on how gifted kids are especially targeted for bullying.

I’ve had a peripheral affiliation with a school violence prevention group for years, thanks to incurring my share (and some others’) of psychological boo-boos during those tender school years. And I hate how kids can just destroy each others’ self-worth — lord, the real world does that enough; let the kids just have their youth, their dreams, their idealism as long as they possibly can.

And for all those who always told me I was smart enough to figure out how to get over it?

“Regular kids get bullied, too, but gifted kids are bullied based on their school performance, which makes the child’s strength into a weakness” and a potential source of shame, said (Sylvia) Rimm.

Now that, that I can identify with. I don’t know that I’d call myself gifted anymore. I don’t know that I’d call myself average, either, because I’ve come to regard that with distaste as much as I wonder if it isn’t a compliment, some days. I know we all go through phases where it seems like nothing’s fair and nothing you do is ever going to be right, so why even bother.

But at one time, I was special. I believed so much in myself; I had little concept of limitations. Financial limitations, sure, but that drove me from an early age to know that if I could just figure out how to go to college, I could overcome that. So I studied and just did everything in my power to sparkle. I wanted to be known, seen, loved. I wanted great things for myself so that I could make even greater things possible for others.

And then the seventh grade hit.

It was ninth grade that destroyed me, though. Tenth pretty much blew, too, now that I think about it. I’ll spare all the details but I found that when I wouldn’t let people cheat off my tests, when I wouldn’t do their work for them, when I wasn’t all that interested in helping them to get the kind of grades I was making when I was the one studying and doing extra-credit projects and otherwise losing sleep and busting my ass and doing extracurricular activities to boot and all they wanted was an easy A, I became the target of their wrath. I don’t know what they had to do that was so important that they couldn’t commit to learning something — I guess whoring around and tormenting others must take a lot of practice time.

I wrote it off at first — I didn’t have time for stupid shit. But your only escape from the ring of idiocy of these mean assholes (who have lots of friends who are other mean assholes) is to be in advanced-placement classes. But you don’t have those all day. You have study halls and gym and lunch hours. Gah. I learned to take summer gym with all the other nerds so that we could all take academic classes instead of a full year of phys ed with the assholes (because there was always a clique in each class).

It was only in my classes and activities that I could sparkle — to be around other misfits who made me seem normal. 😉 I was a “popular” one in that group — joker, prankster, outspoken brat — our fun came from trying to outsmart each other in conversation. Dork fun, I guess. I didn’t love it — I longed to be a normal teenager, but I just wasn’t. Sure, I loved makeup and clothes and boys; I just daresay they didn’t love me back.

Anyway, I’ve digressed; I really don’t like this subject. I didn’t like feeling belittled for something that others should have envied. I didn’t like having it announced that I got the only A in the class because I would end up with gum in my hair within 10 minutes. I remember being truly confounded that people actually hated me for being in the top 1% of my high school class (somewhere around freshman/sophomore year; most of the mean assholes dropped out by junior year, thank god). I hate to this day overhearing comments — I am a skilled eavesdropper because I need to make sure I am not the subject of conversation.

Back then, I did what a lot of us do — I quit raising my hand in classes where I didn’t exactly go unnoticed. I kept to myself. I didn’t laugh at the clever jokes the teachers made that went completely over the morons’ heads. I didn’t make eye contact with the teachers. I didn’t answer when called upon even though my hand was down and everyone knew I would know the answers. I shrugged a lot. My posture went straight to shit. I saw a lot of disappointment in the eyes of my teachers as they wondered if I hadn’t been caught up on the reading or that I hadn’t done the assignment or, worse, that I hadn’t been paying attention. Because teachers have the power to make your life miserable if you aren’t there mentally.

These days, behavior like that to which I succumbed is cause for intervention — for searching lockers and bags, for wondering if this is going to be the kid who shoots up the school or the kid who takes the bottle of pills to kill herself.

From the article:

Often, psychologists say, gifted children who are bullied turn their rage and despair inward. Among them was J. Daniel Scruggs of Meriden, Conn., a slightly built 12-year-old with an IQ of 139.

Scruggs was tormented for more than a year by middle school classmates who shoved him off the bleachers, affixed “Kick Me” signs to his back and made him eat his lunch off the cafeteria floor. Many school officials knew about the abuse and failed to intervene, state investigators found. On Jan. 2, 2002, the boy walked into his bedroom closet and hanged himself.

Lesson learned? Dumb assholes will live forever and reproduce like fiends to give the world more mean little assholes. Many smart kids really, truly think it’s their fault or else they don’t know how to stop the madness without calling more attention to themselves, so they resolve the problem the only way they think they can.

I was the target of so many people for so many things, I pretty much gave up on any sense of normalcy. I spent a lot of time writing in my journal and eventually writing fiction and poetry and stuff. The lonely person’s friend, the writing utensil. If I’d only had a blog back then, hoo boy. 😉

But while I remember being emotionally exhausted at the end of every single day, I know I awakened every single day hoping that the day would come when I could give all those half-witted bastards some sort of smackdown.

And in a way, I did. Remember, I was hot shit among the smart kids. And they elected me their leader. No, seriously, guess who got National Honor Society president? (Let’s forget the disaster THAT endeavor was, however!). I remember when it was announced over the loudspeaker at the end of junior year, cheers erupted. Cheers! For me! My friends on the newspaper and in another group I volunteered with, my fellow smarty-pantses, people older and younger than me who’d heard of me and who’d had classes with me.

Even the remaining handful of mean assholes congratulated me. Not all of them, of course, but some of the louder-mouth loudmouths gushed — saying they’d known all along that my brains would take me far in life.

!

Funny how life changes on a dime.

I gladly accepted kind words. It didn’t make up for years of being assaulted verbally for anything from my (off-the-charts) test scores to my (clearly not so acceptable) appearance, but it helped.

And I wasn’t about to get sentimental, either.

I remember at graduation, everybody was all boo-hooing and shit. I personally had just had some really good friends make my life hell and I’d just made amends with them, mostly just to get through the rest of high school with some allies, even if those alliances were fragile at best.

But anyway, graduation. Weeping, heaving, sobbing. But not me. Boy howdy, not only was I not going to ruin my makeup, but I had nothing to cry over. Leaving them? Not having to tiptoe past people every day of my life, praying that they didn’t see me or else that they’d run out of insults? I’d said goodbye to the class of 1992 somewhere around 1987, thanks.

But it’s weird, though. I still get my insecure moments like anyone else. And nobody — and I mean NOBODY — challenges their own judgment more than I do. Because it’s not like you can walk around with your IQ scores (just not the SAT scores — those were horrid), telling folks, “See? I was smart once! I was never the prettiest girl in the room and definitely not the thinnest but I’m somebody! I have some redeeming value!”

Don’t think I don’t tell myself that very same thing about 20 times a day.

The problem with challenging your own smarts (and knowing you actually *have* some) is that it’s really easy to doubt yourself. When somebody asks why you weren’t in a meeting and you swear to God that you never knew about it, you end up racking your own brain wondering how you didn’t know. Were you told and you forgot? Did you write it down somewhere? And then you find out that no, it was just that you weren’t copied on the memo. No big deal. But gawd, that moment of thinking that someone else is looking at you like you’re stupid is just torture. I take that very personally. I think most of us do. I think lesser persons let it go because they know you can only change the future, not the past. Or, rather, that’s the reason WE eventually let it go — others just don’t care as much as we do.

It’s like the perception that just because you’re too (insert whatever physical characteristic applies), that says something about you. On the “Grey’s Anatomy” message boards, for instance, people are bitching because they think Callie is “too fat” for George. I remember the same shit when “Titanic” came out and waif-like Catholic school whores on the bus would bitch how “fat” Kate Winslet was.

Which, she never was. And neither is Callie. And I abhor how the perception is that big girls don’t deserve love. Believe me, I’ve been singing that song to myself for 20 years now. I don’t need these teen-pregnancy-statistics looking down on ME with pity.

It’s funny, though, the dichotomy — at least, in me. Being put down for being smart made me (temporarily) want to hide it so that I could blend in with the unwashed masses. But being put down for enjoying food (because it can’t talk, clearly!) makes me think, “Enh. Fuck off.” I hate how people look at you if you are going through a drive-thru or if you hit a vending machine or have an ice cream cone in your hand — people gape like you’re going to explode all over them or something. Like the button on your jeans might pop and blind them. (Well, that last part MIGHT have some truth to it. … 😉 )

It’s almost like a rebellion, in a way, to enjoy your life despite being (insert adjective that makes people hate you). And since high school, I’ve never been one to pass up an opportunity to make people uncomfortable. In fact, I’m KNOWN for it. It is EXPECTED of me. Even though I overthink everything I say/do, the moments when I make people question things they hold true somehow makes life so much more delicious.

Don’t get me wrong — I still wonder if, based on certain details only, that’s why I don’t have the things I want in life. And even though I question my sense all the time, it is the last thing I would blame for not having those things. It’s like the pressure never goes away to automatically want to go into hiding rather than step into any sort of spotlight — because when people see you, you become a target, for better or worse. You might attract unwanted attention when you stick out your neck. But I am hoping — and I guess I always have — that if you reach out your arms, someone will be good enough to grasp your hands and pull you out of your own self-inflicted vortex of insanity … and pull you out the other side.

To borrow a thought from Sabre, I look forward to being on that other side. I just hope I get enough of a tug to lift this pudgy pork roast ass to the heights my heart has been longing to hit!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 16th, 2006 at 6:24 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.