I was a sensitive little kid. Oversensitive. I was only three months younger than the youngest kid in my class but I was short and skinny. And I wasn’t just a slow learner, I was the kid in the class the teacher would point to as being dumb because I couldn’t recite the alphabet, read a sentence or add and subtract. Turns out there were two reasons for this. One, I couldn’t see the blackboard. Anything further away from the end of my hands was a blur. I was severely short sighted. And two, I was dyslexic. Severely dyslexic. When I looked at a line of text in a book it would flip around like it was trying to hide. The alphabet stopped being legible after ‘E’. Numbers would reverse themselves and become a jumble. At the same time I was verbal and had an extensive vocabulary that I could use effectively by the time I was in first grade.
At first my parents weren’t concerned because they found me to be articulate and socially adept in situations with adults. Since it hadn’t occurred to anyone to test my vision and dyslexia wasn’t known about then, it was only in school where I appeared to be failing. I was one of the last kids to be picked for team sports. I was one of the kids that was constantly bullied. I seemed to attract bullies. But not just other kids, I was bullied by teachers as well because, as it was explained to me later, I made teachers look bad. Since teachers made an example of me in front of the class why shouldn’t the bullies join in?
Somewhere along the line I developed the ability to make people laugh. So I became a class clown and that stopped most of the bullying by the kids. But my teachers weren’t laughing. I came to the attention of the school administration who met with my mom and stepdad to discuss my lack of achievement. I was given batteries of tests. All sorts of tests. It turned out I had a high IQ result that was revealed to my mom and stepdad who shared it with me. But it wasn’t until I was given further tests in high school that my score of 163 was explained to me. Years later it came in at 168 on the test I took for admission to MENSA, but it’s never earned me a lollipop. The opposite in fact.
According to the school this new information only proved that I wasn’t dumb. So I must be lazy. And that made me even more of a pariah. I wasn’t trying hard enough. I was making the school system look bad. I was a trouble maker.
Poor eyesight could no longer be used as an excuse. I’d been wearing strong corrective glasses since my first eye test when I was nine or ten (Funny story about that … I was driving with my mom in her Packard convertible when I pointed to a truck down the street and commented on all the people in Hawaiian shirts. Turned out it was a florist’s truck full of bright flowers. She booked me in for an eye test that week).
When I hit Junior High School I started fighting back. Literally. When I first arrived at Lincoln Junior High School in Santa Monica I was still short and skinny. Weedy would describe me perfectly. I had come to the conclusion that I didn’t belong here on earth. That my real parents had dropped me off from some distant planet and that they’d be back to pick me up once they realized their mistake. I wore strange combinations of clothes and different colored socks. I went out of my way to look weird and different.
I spent my first two semesters in detention (aka 7th Period) and getting “swats” from the coaches for bad behavior. I was lucky to get a “C” on my report cards. The only class I survived was English and that’s because of my verbal vocabulary. However, I copied my book reports from Classics Illustrated comics and the family’s set of encyclopedia.
I hadn’t read a book – ever – but I could figure out what to copy. I was a copy & paste bandit before I started to shave. If I couldn’t succeed in the system I’d sure as hell find out a way around it.
In the meantime, I was still being bullied by a couple of big guys who didn’t think my clown act was all that funny. Until … one day I stopped being the short skinny guy and shot up, seemingly overnight, to six foot three and put on some solid weight.
I’d always like swimming and got on the swimming and water polo teams. I lettered. I started dressing to impress the girls. I started shaving. My grades improved. I’d finally arrived.
Nevertheless, one particular guy had picked me as his bitch. The guy was stocky and had a square head. He could have been cast as Sgt Vince Carter on Gomer Pyle a decade later. I don’t think he had a single friend in the entire school and seemed to like it that way.
Despite my new size and physical strength I still found the guy intimidating and would go out of my way to avoid him. One day I was going up the stairs in the main building when I was assaulted by a sharp pain in my rectum. Thomas (I’m omitting his last name but remember it well) had “goosed” me with his thumb, driving it up from behind while I was climbing. I reacted without thinking, whipping around and punching him squarely in the temple. He was sent falling backwards through the other kids and landed, appropriately, on the first landing.
Thomas ended up being taken to the school nurse and had a huge knot on his forehead for weeks. I ended up being hauled into the principal’s office with my parents and Thomas’ parents for a meeting to determine what punishment I’d receive. His parents demanded my expulsion and threatened legal action while my parents had been busy preparing my defense. Several students and a couple of teachers told of how Thomas was one of the school’s most obnoxious bullies and the students who witnessed the event said I’d only reacted to Thomas’ goosing assault. It was either a natural reaction or self-defense. Either way it was justified. Thomas’ parents should be grateful that he hadn’t been expelled. I think the thing that upset them the most was the revelation their wonderful boy had tried to stick his thumb up my ass. Now THAT’S REVOLTING!
I got a warning and Thomas was suspended for a week so he could recuperate at home. I thought it was fitting that the knot on his forehead was still there when he returned. He never bothered me again.
The other school bullies also decided to avoid me and I wasn’t challenged to prove myself again. I was even able to stop some bullying one day on the sports field. As part of my team obligations I was serving a short stint managing the ball box next to the track during the lunch period when I noticed two older guys pushing around a younger guy and a girl. I went over without a clue what I’d do when I got there and found that the two older guys were harassing a handicapped boy and that his sister was trying to defend him.
I was hardly a hero because all I did was tell the guys they should be ashamed of themselves and that I hoped I’d never see them do anything like that again. It was like something my mom would say. But it worked. They apologized and sloped off like naughty puppies. The girl thanked me with a hug and a kiss and I strutted back to the ball box definitely feeling rather pleased with myself.
Overcoming the victim role © Robert R. Feigel 2022 – All Rights Reserved
Pieces from a Puzzling Life 