Weird Kid

[bloodyrosemccoy]

At one point during the week, my siblings, my mom, and I started chatting about our memories of elementary school, and once again I was reminded that, to my surprise, I was a Weird Kid in school.

I suppose we were all Weird Kids to some extent, but it always takes me a while to realize just how weird I was. I remember getting along with most kids, reading books the same way you eat popcorn—a fistful at a time, frenzied to get to the next fistful—and discovering music and language and science. I felt my best friend was my piano teacher (an SCA nerd 8 years my senior—terrible piano teacher, but a really great person to chat with), I had a lot of pen pals, and had a lot of friends who were not very close. I got along well with my siblings. I was into brain science, Star Wars, Tales Of The Paranormal, and notebooks.

And I was exploding with stories. Characters, plots, individual dramatic or comedic scenes, settings, backgrounds—they all spun to life in my head so quickly I sometimes had difficulty making enough universes to hold them all. Scribbling down my story ideas relieved it a little, but they all clamored for attention all the time, to the point where I often had to put my books down for a little bit to let them get their ideas in. Sometimes I would find myself posing or making the face one of them was making in the story in my head.*

I usually spent recesses alone, hands in my pockets, endlessly walking the quarter-mile circle of track around the upper playground lawn. It wasn’t that I felt uninvited to join kids. I did it because I had to spend school beating back the headnoise, and for a few minutes in the morning, at lunch, and in the afternoon, I could relax and let them crash around in there all they wanted.

And I was really content. I sometimes wished I had a friend who understood me, but normally I was just happy. Which is, I think, why I was surprised to find out that there was a concerted effort by teachers, counselors, and my own parents that year to try to get me out of my shell and to engage in the world of tween girls.

“You were baffling,” Mom said. “You weren’t like the child psychology books. You didn’t have really close friends.”

“I got along with people,” I pointed out.

“… You could be stand-offish.”

“Oh.”

“I worried you wouldn’t be happy without any friends.”

“I don’t remember being unhappy. I mean, my fifth grade teacher was a terrible human being, but that was my biggest problem.”

“Fifth grade was bad for everyone,” my sister said. “I had a bunch of friends, and they were always ganging up on me. Or one would get all snotty. I never knew quite where I was with them.”

“You had the normal experience I wanted for Amelia,” my mom told her wryly.

There was a pause as we processed that.

“Why, again?” I finally asked.

I can see that I could do with a little more understanding of how to make friends and influence people, but I’m not entirely sure why I worried people for being happy and friendless instead of constantly paranoid that my friends were going to dump me, but it was interesting to find out. It did explain that friendship group I was put in, though. School psychiatrist figured she’d cured me when I got along with them.

Poor lady. She tried so hard.


*Which did, in fact, lead to this situation once or twice.

Comments

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

I was a Weird Kid in school, but acutely conscious of it. With much the same consternation from parents over the matter, but then, I don't think I was quite as happy about it all as you were. It's hard to say, at this much remove; so much of childhood ends up reworked through what I know and feel now that it's hard to be sure of what I really felt and thought back then.

I spent a lot of time knowing that I was an outsider, and being very proud of it, and also frustrated by the fact that I didn't think it was something I could really do anything about. It wasn't something I had chosen; it was just the way I was.

I spent all my lunch breaks and recesses and time after school reading, or writing. To the point that one of my teachers insisted once on taking away my books when she sent me out to recess so that I would Go Play, and I just sat by the side of the playground with my arms crossed, refusing to interact. So she let me go back to reading again.

But I suppose this is just a way of agreeing with your first point: we were all Weird Kids, to some extent.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I spent a lot of time knowing that I was an outsider, and being very proud of it, and also frustrated by the fact that I didn't think it was something I could really do anything about. It wasn't something I had chosen; it was just the way I was.

Exactly. Might as well take pride in it, since that's all you can do.

It's hard to say, at this much remove; so much of childhood ends up reworked through what I know and feel now that it's hard to be sure of what I really felt and thought back then.

That's true. I did hate fifth grade on some level, but my sister seemed to be right in that everyone did. I even remember wondering a little ways after fifth grade if I'd been depressed in it because everyone kept saying they thought I was.

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

Yup and yup. Also-- "Sometimes I would find myself posing or making the face one of them was making in the story in my head"-- I still do this.

[zimwifepgk.livejournal.com]

XD My sophomore year Religion teacher (Catholic high school, oh what a riot) sent me to the special drug/alcohol/broken home/general troubled teen counselor once, because I was very quiet in class and spent a lot of the 'free time' we had in that class drawing characters or writing dialogue with imaginary people in my notebooks because I'd finished my work packets. It was funny, because I did not realize I was talking to the ~special~ counselor, because I'd never been to see the new regular guidance counselor (who was supposed to help us apply to college and stuff) and thought I was just going for my normal semester-ly 'have the counselor tell me my grades are awesome' appointment. I did not know why the man was asking me about what my family was like and if I ever felt sad and other such baffling questions. When I was later sent a permission slip to go see the regular counselor for the semester-ly appointment and realized it was not the same guy and just who I'd been sent to see the first time, that was when Phone Calls Were Made and I found out just who'd thought I must be on drugs or the victim of parental abuse. I was like, 'HAHAHA' and continued doing what I wanted in Religion class, because I was totally happy doing it.

I never understood what was supposed to be so fun about being Normal and having Normal Friends, growing up. o.o All the Normal people just seemed kind of boring and they never wanted to talk about aliens or interesting historical trivia.

*ponder*

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

You're right. People who are comfortable with their own company can be a lot happier than people who depend on friends to make them happy.

Re: *ponder*

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

*grin* Well, it's not like I want for company, given that I myself appear to be a whole crowd of people.

But yes, I always feel that comfort with oneself is probably a pretty useful trait in the long run.

[tay421.livejournal.com]

I, too, was a Weird Kid in elementary school. I did have friends I played with on occasion, but mostly I kept to myself, coming up with weird concepts... most of which I don't remember, because they tended to stay in my head, I guess. A couple of them stand out really well, like when I was seven or eight and thinking about Earth (or, more accurately at the time, my general area) being under a microscope, or inside of a snow globe-like structure, watched over by giant scientists, and how the two worlds could possibly communicate with one another without magic or some other form of shrinking/growing being involved. Though sometimes shrinking was involved anyway, because I've always been interested in that.

I don't think I was ever sent to a counselor because I was quiet, though... I was sent to a counselor because I kept itching my arm or my head until I was bleeding. 8| I wasn't on drugs, either. I was just generally messed up, I think. On all kinds of meds that just made me worse. Not sure how I got out of it. Stopped going to school, I guess. I was going insane there.

...Oh jeez, that comic. XD I make faces while I'm drawing/writing, too. I love Awkward Zombie.

[allamistako.livejournal.com]

I was the kid my mum always warned me of. My teachers tended to call me "The Corrupter of Youth". It wasn't until I was almost out of the high-school equivalent we have out here that I actually made some FRIENDS, as opposed to "people who i go to school with", "People who I hang around with", or "People I play D&D with"...

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Hey, I still haven't found a whole lot of those.

[kadharonon.livejournal.com]

I... uh.

I have (and probably have always had) this terrible habit of walking down the street, muttering conversations under my breath between characters, or certain phrases that come out of certain characters, just to see how they... taste, I guess, would be the best word. Seeing as this is accompanied by facial expressions...

I may look like a crazy person a lot more than I think I do, and this only just occurred to me now.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Just get yourself a bluetooth headset. Everybody will just think you're on the phone!

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Hah! Yes, that comic is turning out to be autobiographical for writers as well!

It's actually a good habit for a writer to say lines of dialogue aloud to see if they sound like something a character would actually say. Of course, the writing tip didn't say anything about whether you were on the bus or something at the time ...

[kadharonon.livejournal.com]

The characters who come out seem to be characters I have roleplayed, more often than not. Which means sometimes I will be walking around muttering lines that would be uttered by Kitty, and she's just not very public-friendly in any sense.

I suppose my problem with attempting to write stuff is that I do not have the needed vocabulary to describe the whole of the character, and it becomes uninteresting when written out anyway. Thinking about any of my characters becomes more of an exercise in acting than anything else; I'm a bit too easily distracted to spend the time it takes to write things out, and am dissatisfied with the result more often than not, but I can mutter lines of dialog with different attitudes all day long if I'm in the mood for it.

Sometimes I can convey enough of the character in a sketch to satisfy my brain. Sometimes I want to get up and pace and rant and rave and that's... that's when I start to feel like a crazy person.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

I got lucky. My mom had been a weird kid of more or less the same variety as I ended up being, so she just kind of let me be for the most part, which was what she wanted at that age.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

Well, that has to have been the most self-affirming thing I've read this month.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Hee hee! Your self, or my self?

Certainly at least my self. I'm still mostly convinced that I'm not maladjusted at all; everyone else is. ;)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

I hoped yourself but knew myself. I used to prefer solitude much for the same reasons you describe and other people eventually convinced me it must have meant there was something wrong with me. I could never understand, when I was in the youth center after grade school, why there'd be a system where if you misbehaved you'd have be put away from the other kids to be by yourself. "You mean I'm not already being punished by being forced to be around the other kids the rest of the time?" It wasn't that I thought I was better to be around than they were in general, but how could someone else possibly come up with just what I wanted to have inside my head without knowing me as well as I did?

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

There seem to be a lot of us on here-- maybe we should start our own community?