I mostly have bad memories of public school, not for the learning experience, or the good people in students and teachers there, but all I can remember (unless shown photos or something) is a lot of the bad stuff from those days. And in the interests of my own psyche that finally wants to open up these to complete strangers viewing on their computer screens (in a break from taking in porn or complaining about films they've never seen), I will now start a list of these things I remember:
-Elementary school, there were moments where I would eat a lunch of a butter sandwich (because they were delicious to my young taste buds), and then get mocked by a chorus of older kids singing "bread and butter, bread and butter", I don't even know why. Or other times where I got made fun of for watching Digimon when Pokemon was in.
-Although in retrospect, much of the bad stuff in elementary was me doing stuff and not thinking I'd get in trouble, such as cutting my own hair with safety scissors during an art assignment (Don't remember why I did that).
-Things got worse going to middle school. I hated middle school, and the following items will be of that time until I go onto high school.
-The kids were much meaner and nastier, I know some were mean and nasty in elementary, but most of the time it may have been harmless (such as singing "I believe I can die, I got shot by the FBI") unless it me being made fun of. But middle school, it was terrible. The kids I hung out with at the YMCA after school center were often smiling bullies, frequently taking advantage of my naivete so I did such things as say swear words in Spanish, or one scary day where they tricked me into getting onto a public bus with no knowledge of its route when I complained of how the Y's van was taking hours to get to pick us up, I nearly got lost until I got to the Y. They were all kins of kids, some nice guys who disappeared after a while, to middle class kids who were almost out of a stereotype manual, to big thugs and plain mean guys who loved making fun of me for things such as my talking about oldies music.
-Also there was a ton of random kids at the school who made fun of me, or tricked me. Jerks who would start picking on me after school even though I never met them, and my attempts to reply back with insults like "Get bent" made them respond that I was hitting on them. Kids who would suddenly hide under my umbrella on rainy days without permission(because we all had to wait outside the buildings before lunch ended). After school kids waiting for And this seeming conspiracy of kids, who after school would yell stuff that for some reason made me angry (such as the phrases "Nicky's hair" and "Happy Birthday"), then run for it, and though I did attempt to fight back using my bookbag as a weapon, they were always too fast and superior in every way to me. There were times where waiting for the Y van, I would get picked on in full sight of the kids waiting for their parents to ick them up, and a bunch of YMCA kids and others tortured me with things like threatening me with "pepper spray" that was actually candy spray, and no one stood up for me.
-And then there was this one guy named Angelo, he was one grade below me, yet a foot taller, this big meathead with rosy cheeks, Neanderthal brow, and buzzcut, he would always treat me as a target and openly mock me, talking own to me, and on a ton of occasions imitating my young voice, which was stated to sound like a giraffe. it's been years, details are fuzzy, but I lived in fear.
-There were good teachers though, but the school system itself sucked, because i did complain about these kids, very often, but only one was ever caught. It left me very cynical and untrusting of people, knowing that the kids were hiding from trouble in plain sight. They were monsters under those John Burroughs uniforms, and yes I'm saying the name of the school, because that name still burns in me as a scar.
-And this might not mean anything, but I do remember a lot of the kids during the school year and summer day camp playing illegally downloaded music and playing bootleg DVDs for the whole center.
When I come up with more stuff that I don't have a memory for off the bat, I'll continue this post. In the end, I don't know the causes of all this except within myself, but I do wish for a reform of the school system here in the United States, these might all be examples of unnoticed factors that mean the States have been going downhill in academics compared to other countries (not trying to be a nationalist or patriotic, just want to help prevent future catastrophe and unhappiness, if applicable).
No comments:
Post a Comment