I recall four occasions from my first year of primary school, and all seem relevant now.
At the end of my first day I was meant to meet my older cousins at the front gate, which was a large stone arch. Unfortunately there was a gate that looked exactly the same at the rear of the school. My cousins didn’t turn up, and I knew it was a short walk straight down the road so I headed off. And got lost. Long-story short I knocked on someone’s door and declared that I was lost. And I had memorised my parent’s phone number.
During lunch breaks I would often stand just outside my classroom and try and work out what everyone else was doing and why. I would stare at some drainpipes, I think to make it look I was doing something and not being 100% odd. And every-time I stood there the same pop song would play in my head over and over again. The song and place belonged to each other. There was no shaking it.
There was a soccer field and I used to watch the kids play soccer from quite some distance away, and I yearned to join in. But I couldn’t work out how. It made me very sad.
I went to a birthday party at a girl’s home, with plenty of my classmates present. Her father was a policeman. Despite encouragement I didn’t really participate in the games, and wouldn’t eat any cake. I just leant against the wall and observed. I didn’t mind, but it bothered me that it bothered them.
We changed towns a few times and that didn’t help with making friends, but I was always going to struggle regardless. The basic rule was that the oddest kid in the school would latch on to me and he would be my friend. As long as my friend was talkative, I never minded who they were. They did tend to be the type that got bullied, and I wasn’t a good friend in those situations. Empathy clearly wasn’t there at that age, though self-preservation was strong in me.
I was bullied consistently throughout childhood, even by girls. All it took was four factors combined – I hung out with the wrong people, I was clever, I was aloof, and my reactions were always wrong, such as smiling when I shouldn’t. Two factors meant that I was never beaten up, despite dozens of attempts each year – I was clever (good for hiding), and I ran very, very fast.
Crying in hiding places was very common for me.
At home I was a pretty active kid, lots of interests, got on OK with my siblings, plenty of exploring outdoors and bike riding, to balance the reading and music listening (and later, computers). I would listen to the Top 40 countdown every Sunday and religiously chart the new positions in a scrapbook. I’ve loved listening to pop music, but didn’t appear to have much musical talent. So I tried to find patterns in the songs I liked, and patterns in the changing chart positions.
At school, in classrooms, I had two states of being – zoned out or class clown. I don’t know which came first, shutting out the sensory inputs arising from 30 kids in a room, or staring out the window from boredom because the studies were too easy. As a young adult everyone thought I was a stoner (although I would never touch drugs, then), because I was zoned out. It was a coping mechanism.
School camps and dances were awkward. They were highly social situations for confident kids, and even though I witnessed a lot of flirting between genders, and beyond, I could never work out how I could do the same. It was a foreign language.
Stimming.
I never rocked, that I can recall. I would chew on pens and fidget, but nothing like rocking. I know now that I’ve always wanted to, I guess I just didn’t because nobody else did. Trying to be normal has been a constant in my life.