socialization

Maybe I just went to an especially awful school, but I can honestly say that my days in public school were easily the worst years of my childhood.

We rarely did group projects, the teachers regularly encouraged us to be ‘quiet as a snowflake’, and when she came into a room full of talking students, she was unhappy. One student got me in serious trouble by falsely reporting me for swearing. The few friends that I made either moved away, lost interest in me, or turned out to be horrible people. There was one kid whom I mistook for a friend for a few weeks until his brother thought that it would be funny to squirt a lighter full of water at me and say that he was going to burn me. Then my ‘friend’ pushed me on the ground and told me not to even come near his house anymore. I was in such a state of shock that I hid myself in my room as soon as I got home, and I told nobody about it until years later. (I once mentioned in passing to my parents that my school kicked out somebody, and for some reason they would not leave me the fuck alone until I said more about that.)

Admittedly, there were times when I acted shitty too, like throwing pebbles at others for fun, and I thoughtlessly told somebody that he was going to Hell just for disobeying the teacher, but at least I felt guilty about how I misbehaved. Whatever the case, I learned from my mistakes by acting more reticent.

Then years later, when I said on a forum (the Penny Arcade one, in case somebody cares) that I didn’t consider socializing an important part of school, somebody responded by calling me “[insert ableist slur here]”… it should have been a sign that maybe something in my childhood went horribly wrong, but nope, he instantly concluded that I must have been the problem, which is so hideously lazy that I can’t even begin to describe it. Americans are very antisocial as a people.