Was anyone a loner in school

[Democracy White]

or in school. Was anyone ever picked on or being picked because you are somehow "different" and thus not part of the mainstream?

I was. All of my school career, from K-12 I was picked on. It seemed like I was a bully magnet or something. In kindergarten I was actually moved up to the 1st grade because I already knew how to read, etc. (I started reading at the age of 3)There were these three boys who were mean to me. They would push me in the mud at recess and throw rocks at me while I was on the swings.

The worst time I was bullied was when I was in 4th-5th grade. There was this girl named Chasity who was really mean. For a while she would be my friend and let me hang out with her and then she'll suddenly turn on me and then be my friend again. She once followed me home from school poking a stick into my back and telling me to walk faster. There were other things she did as well but it would be to lengthy to discuss here.
Also in the summer it seemed that all of the neighborhood kids would turn against me. I remember going to one of my "friends" homes and all of the kids were there playing and all of a sudden they ran into the garage as soon as they saw me and shut the door. I asked if I could come in and Courtney one of the girls that lived there came out and gave me a cracker. Well unbeknowest to me there was a jalapeno pepper slice between them and she laughed as I ate it. She went back into the garage and I found this hose in her neighbor's yard and drank some water from it. I found her standing before me and with a sneer on her face she said I wasn't in the club. I had no idea what the hell she was talking about.

That's only a smidgen of the hell I went through as a kid.

Anyone ever find that being in a classroom at certains times is stressful. Such as having a subsitute or when it gets noisy? How about when you have to work in groups?! I hated that so much, I would make some excuse to leave, such as going to the bathroom and sitting there for the whole period or going to the library.

Anyways I don't have much time to say what I want. So hit me back if you can.

Dee

[supernova]

1. I was always a loner

and I was bullied in school too.

In first and second grade, I was bullied by the class bully, a girl who was bigger than all of us, believe it or not. She hit me in the stomach every day nearly.

In third grade, I was bullied by a girl who did things like pick on me and taunt me verbally. This was also the beginning of the era of "sit any where you want" seating. I came in one day to find out she had persuaded everybody else to move their chairs to the other side of the room, under the windows. I was the only chair on the opposite wall. Nice. One girl did eventually sit with me.

To this day I don't enjoy groups, especially large gatherings. And I definitely don't enjoy activities like teaching. I got a teaching license when I was in college but I avoided teaching at all costs. Too many people in a classroom to keep up with.

I prefer to do things alone or in small groups of 4 or less people. Three is ideal for me.

Bottom line: To this day, I prefer to take people in small doses.

[Democracy White]

4. You're just like me

I never had anyone really hit me, thank God. I'm not the kind of person that likes to get into a fight nor do I have the temper to do so. My sister has all of that. And I hated those "sit anywhere you want." things or the "pick a partner" things. I always had to beg someone to be my partner or the teacher had to assign someone.

Like I said I hated groups as well, I was either stuck with the work or ignored completely.

When I was in my 7th grade home ec class I was assigned to a particular group of snobs. They did nothing but talk during the paper assignments ( We had to come up with recipes) They ignored me completely and when we had to cook, they never let me help or they would give me a broom and sweep. Also they would tell me to go on the computer or something. The teacher saw all of this and gave the group a bad grade for teamwork. One of the girls asked and I guess the teacher told her something to this effect: "You didn't allow all of the people in your group to participate." The teacher went on to explain that they excluded me. Well the girl try to put it on that I didn't want to work but the teach was smarter than that.

When I was in 8th grade drama I was assigned to a group, again because no one would take me, to a group of boys that kinda made fun of me. the assignment was that we had to work together to make a script and act it out. Well the three boys were horror buffs and only allowed me to write a small part and act a small part in the script. Otherwise I was ignored completely while they fooled around. BTW, the script that they wrote was completely dumb.


In 10th or 11th grade I was put into tech class with the HI kids. I wasn't assigned to the HI kids group, instead I was assigned to another group. The kids again ignored me completely and didn't really let me work. Oh yeah, they let me make a little 8-ball decal thing out of construction paper (that was popular back then) but that was about it. I was absent for three days afterwards due to headaches and stress. (played hooky alot back then cause I really dreaded school. I dreaded working later on and thus that is one of the reasons why I am on disability) Well when I got back they remarked to me that I wasn't going to get a grade because I was gone and unbable to help. I told the teacher and he told me that he was the only one that gives grades not the kids.

All in all, I hated participatory groups. Sometimes when it was called for, I would sneak out and sit in the hall or go to the bathroom and stay there or I would makes some kind of excuse to leave.
I tolerated the first two pep assemblies that we had in 9th and 10th grade. However in 11th and 12th grade it started to get to me. I HATED the fact that I had to be forced to go. So I started to sneak off and found a good place to hide by the auditorium. One time a security gurad caught me though and I had to go down there, he followed me down there but when he wasn't looking I snuck off again and hid in a bathroom. LOL! I hated pep assemblies they were too much umm.. what's the word? fake and Orwellian I suppose.


Dee

[bemildred]

2. My sympathies to you.

I was fine until 4th grade, I was in a small town and it was like a big family, odd people were accepted. Then we moved to a large city and it sucked from there on out. I still don't understand the deal where a couple kids get in a fight and everybody else stands around and cheers them on in beating on each other.

:hi:

[hippiechick]

3. Yes ...

I was the one who could be found during recess sitting alone on the playground reading or just ... being. Sometimes I would try to talk to the teacher/monitor who would encourage me to 'go play with the other kids' rather than being interested in talking {about whatever) with me.

Team sports & the 'group mentality' - working in groups in class - was nerve wracking ... especially having to give 'group reports' because there was always at least one blabbermouth with their own insipid agenda and a mountain of 'center of attention' issues aside: maybe that's why I despise The Lounge ? that made the entire time fairly insufferable.

I was bullied, but primarily because I was really smart and rather chubby. Not sure if that fed into my 'loner' status, or if it was the reverse; but elementary school was brutal. By middle school I just sort of found my own niche and avoided all of the herd-mentality goings on.

:hi:

[Democracy White]

5. yeah

I was alone at recess too or I would go to the library. Never had a problem with the monitor though. I hated having to get up in front of the class and read a report. I didn't like all of that attention.

Later on as I got into mid school though I started shutting out my world by either drawing or reading during class. I was still learing because then I could kinda multitask, though there were times that I completely shut out reality that I have lost track of what was going on. Some teachers would reprimand me for it while others just let me do what I wanted to do.

Class, especially if it was loud and rowdy, kind of like my 10th grade Spanish class would get deep into my soul that I want to cover my ears and hide someplace and rock until I calmed down. I knew that would look idiotic so that is why I would make some excuse to leave or I would bury myself in a book or a drawing that I am doing.

I also could relate and I still do to people that are older than me than those in my peer group.

Dee :hi:

[kitkatrose]

6. Wow, that really sucks.

My school time wasn't really that bad, mostly because people ignored me until they wanted me to do their work. :eyes: I never had any problems getting people to be in my group, on the contrary, I wanted to be left alone, and people kept coming up to me and bothering about something stupid or other. I guess it helped that I was a little bigger than average for elementary school, so I didn't get beat up.

By the time I got to high school, I just had one or two close friends, and I could deal with the classroom annoyances. Apparently being on task is some sort of sin that other children feel the need to stop, since whenever I was reading a book or doing work that no one else was doing, there was always one person to stick their finger in my book and try to make me lose my spot. Or try to engage me in conversation ("Why are you so shy/stuck up/whatever?"). Or any other inane distraction from why I was here in class.

Of course, by all standards, I was a total nerd, but I was never picked on, just (I thought) ignored. Of course, by the time I graduated two years ago, I had people I didn't know congratulating me for placing in the top 5% and all that jazz. Fortunately, I had a pretty good support group of fellow smart, semi-loners, or at least were strange-people friendly my last year in HS.

[LWolf]

7. Yes.

Not too much "picking on." I went to 10 schools, K - 12; I was always the "new kid," and I always knew I'd be moving on, so why connect? After 6 months at one particularly violent campus, I learned to be "invisible" to bullies as well as the rest of the world, when necessary.

[Wapsie B]

8. Yes I was,

both in high school and college. I was the quiet oddball in the corner,the one different from the crowd. The being picked on was more obvious in high school, more physical in nature. But in college it was still there though much more subtle. I remember being belittled behind my back and to my face about various things. People thought I didn't know anything or wasn't able to do anything. Trust me, music school can be a very vicious place for someone who doesn't defend himself all that well. I was looked on with amusement by even my campus minister, not really taken seriously by those in any of my peer groups. That lead to a total nonexistence socially. I had no confidence to ask a woman to date, let alone become romantically and sexually involved with someone. This is crap I'm still dealing with.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. I refuse to believe in reincarnation, because I'd hate to go through my

teen-age years again.

I was always a bit of a bookworm, but elementary school was all right, because there were a lot of other bookish kids. Going to extended family gatherings was always boring and stressful, though, because I was stuck between generations. There was a huge group of first cousins in my mother's generation and a huge group of second cousins in my generation, but they were all at least ten years younger than I. Some of the older relatives would scold me for sitting and reading while everyone else was socializing, but the fact was that neither the older group nor the younger group really wanted me.

Life deteriorated sharply when I was in seventh grade. We moved from a quiet college town, where there were plenty of intellectually-oriented kids, to an exurb full of kids straight out of "Heathers." My social standing was about one notch above that of the retarded students, and it didn't help at all that my mother and grandmother were excessively strict, out of fear that I would end up as a teenage mother. (Since boys noticed me only to make fun of me, I am mystified as to how they thought this would happen.) My father was a workaholic who came home mostly to eat and sleep.

I couldn't take the bus downtown with other girls, I couldn't go to parties that took place at night, and I couldn't choose my own clothes. I never was a teenage "phone-aholic," because there was no one to talk to. I ate lunch with the same group every day, and they were fine at lunch, but no one ever invited me to parties or anything.

I didn't date until I was in college, and while I probably could have stood going to a more intellectually-oriented college, the small, church-related college that I actually attended was the ideal social situation for me, full of students who had mostly been raised slightly less strictly than I had, as well as faculty members who were always willing to act as substitute parents. This supportive atmosphere helped me rebel against the stifling rules and micromanagement of my personal life that prevailed at home.

I purposely went to the East Coast to graduate school, and that was part of my liberation. I can now pass for a "normal" person.

However, I still am not comfortable phoning people just to talk, and I have to know people very well before I'll make a suggestion about socializing. I hate walking into a large gathering of strangers--it's too much input at once, so I never liked the zoo-like parties that prevail at the typical college. I'd much rather join small gatherings of six or eight people.

[Deja Q]

10. Yes...

I've just had about 50 flashbacks of the more vile incidents, so I'm not going to post them. But from baseless rumors of "eating worms" to the high school "badminton birdie filled with 'shampoo'" incident, I could write a book...

Yeah, I'm a loner. Always was. Am. Always will be.

Doesn't make me evil by default. Does make me sad. And mainstream people have no frigging clue what they take for granted.