19th April 2007, 2:09 PM
Prison is exactly the description I use to describe school, only with education. Really, I hear arguments for the social aspect of school about "learning how to deal with society", but I may be alone here (I'm not) but I actually had to UNlearn every single social "rule" I picked up in school.
I didn't go through any planning or revenge plots, I just sort of clammed up and went from class to class. I avoided interaction because that's for the weak. I wandered around school the way an herbavore skitters from bush to bush, only exposed long enough to get that mushroom and then back to relative safety. Gender didn't even matter though. Aside from that, my home life was pretty great. Interesting juxtaposition there.
Even when I intentionally decided to avoid interaction for my own safety, people still seemed to go out of their way to do the bullying thing. Only later did I find out that people who managed to fit in seemed to, by and large, have a HUGE misunderstanding of the "loner". Apparently, and I get this from overhearing conversations about it, the nerds and loners are all "stuck up". Apparently they misinterpret guarded nature and isolation as me thinking I was "too good for them". I get the impression that the very idea that I may have been simply terrified of what might happen to me was completely outside their range of empathy.
Mind you, now I understand that by and large, many of them may have actually wanted to be my friend, but I was simply too afraid of anyone there to really trust anyone. I saw ulterior motives and eventually a lot of them (not that this excuses their actions) would take offense and my prophecy would be self fulfilling.
Then there's that American phenomenon of the "shut in", that odd soul that experienced what I experienced but NEVER opened up, living out their lives basically just shut in their room. Sad but it is their life to live I suppose. The problem is the fear of what these sorts might do, but that's not the sort of attention that's going to help. Screaming "you might murder people" isn't exactly going to get the pearls out of that shell.
I didn't go through any planning or revenge plots, I just sort of clammed up and went from class to class. I avoided interaction because that's for the weak. I wandered around school the way an herbavore skitters from bush to bush, only exposed long enough to get that mushroom and then back to relative safety. Gender didn't even matter though. Aside from that, my home life was pretty great. Interesting juxtaposition there.
Even when I intentionally decided to avoid interaction for my own safety, people still seemed to go out of their way to do the bullying thing. Only later did I find out that people who managed to fit in seemed to, by and large, have a HUGE misunderstanding of the "loner". Apparently, and I get this from overhearing conversations about it, the nerds and loners are all "stuck up". Apparently they misinterpret guarded nature and isolation as me thinking I was "too good for them". I get the impression that the very idea that I may have been simply terrified of what might happen to me was completely outside their range of empathy.
Mind you, now I understand that by and large, many of them may have actually wanted to be my friend, but I was simply too afraid of anyone there to really trust anyone. I saw ulterior motives and eventually a lot of them (not that this excuses their actions) would take offense and my prophecy would be self fulfilling.
Then there's that American phenomenon of the "shut in", that odd soul that experienced what I experienced but NEVER opened up, living out their lives basically just shut in their room. Sad but it is their life to live I suppose. The problem is the fear of what these sorts might do, but that's not the sort of attention that's going to help. Screaming "you might murder people" isn't exactly going to get the pearls out of that shell.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)