Thread: Worse Place

Wonderful story, Quix! You're like an adventurer! Someone they'd make a movie about! When you first said you got stuck in the Grand Canyon with a smashed ankle for 20 hours, my initial thought was, Hey, yeah, I saw that movie. The one with James Franco. XD Totally different mental impression than the actual story you told, so, I'm glad you shared it with us. Lots of close calls, people! Everybody so far seems to get in these tight situations, like a bunch of action and drama stars. I think mine would have to be a middle school in Connecticut that I can't remember the name of. It is one of those experiences that bore this deep distrust and dislike for teachers and school in general. This was the only time I was every really bullied and felt persecuted as a kid. Everybody says high school is the worst but I changed states when I went to high school, and everybody left everybody else alone, like they had more important shit to deal with. Middle school was my hell. I was bookish and hated gym, so, often would not dress out, instead preferring to sit on the sidelines and wait for the class to be over. I also wore a lot of black during that time, pre-Goth in my awkward pubescence, not knowing that by doing so, instead of making me invisible, I was drawing attention to myself. A girl with a huge problem with me and I never knew why, would always corner me in the locker room by the door, while I waited for everyone to finish getting dressed and she'd just tear into me with questions meant to mock me and humiliate me in front of her audience of friends. My mother, having dealt with bullies in her own childhood and having overcome a lot of confidence issues in young adulthood, told me some things I could say next time this girl expressed her non-too friendly interest in me. She told me to sarcastically say, Tch, thanks for the interest, Essence, but I like boys, implying that her preoccupation with me was fueled by a crush of some kind. Homophobic and not very appropriate nowadays but to midlate 90's city kids, such a thing was social deathforeshadowing. So, I had gym and I had my perfectly smartass thing to say, was good to go, waiting in my black clothes by the door in the locker room, when she approached me. Heart pounding, never said anything smartass before, the words came out and for some cruel twist of fate, when I meant to say boys I instead said girls. Despite my mortification upon delivery, my very obvious fumbling mistake, it was taken as gospel, and this of course being my first year in middle school, for the next 3 years in that school, I was known as a lesbian. I came out as bisexual 9 years ago, so, that part doesn't really bother me, other than the prejudice the other kids treated me with, afterwards. Particularly the boys, who thought that was the most ridiculous thing, while all the girls treated me with disdain or avoided me altogether. One time, a huge ghetto girl confronted me on the bus because someone said I'd been looking under the tables at girls between their legs and she'd been one of them, supposedly. That old gays are perverts and deviants bias I experienced firsthand. I was very upset, especially since she was antagonistic and threatening, pushing me around a bit, about this thing I did not do to her. The bus ride then did not become a very safe place to be either because we lived in the same neighborhood. The teachers were probably the worst yet, not very helpful, coming up with solutions that isolated me instead. I've only ever been accused of misconduct with a teacher twice, and both times were at this school. The one that destroyed me was my second year at that school, from the one teacher who had been supportive to me during my first year. He recognized my writing talent early on and would let me read my stories, often Stephen King influenced, in front of the class. This budding interest was definitely coaxed by that experience. So, next year, didn't have him as a teacher but wanted to show him some new artwork I'd done. I was mega into Sailor Moon at the time and drew a magical girl with seismic powers, where she pressed her fists together and Kamehameha'd at the ground with a huge energy blast, with a black ball and lightning coming from it, destroying the ground and kicking up boulders and rocks. Passing him in the hallway, I told him I had to hurry to class and handed him the drawing, rushing off. Next, I get called into the office in this back room with the school authority figures like superintendent, vice principal, principal, and school therapist were all sitting around a table, and my mom is there, crying. I was totally blindsided. Apparently, the concept of magical girls and anime was lost on them, because they thought the positioning of the girl's fists, just happening to be hovering between her legs, meant she was masturbating. It didn't matter what I said. It didn't matter what my mom said. That was what it was and I was obviously trying to seduce my old English teacher, my explanation for giving it to him, He was my friend twisted into something perverse. I was banned from drawing for the next two years, put into Special Ed, despite not needing itmy grades going down were a direct result of the horrible conditions I was surrounded with from social pressures and apathetic teachers and the Spec Ed teachers definitely did their best to enforce this rule. Even eating lunch with them privately one time, because I was scared to go to the lunch room with everyone else, I drew a little doodle on the chalk board and was reprimanded immediately. Everything else that's ever happened to me is sunshine and roses compared to being in that school for 3 years, told not to draw because it was wrong. Being an artist since I was very young, it was like death.