School Days

School is usually a hard place for children with disabilities or deformities (at least it was when I was there). Other kids make fun of them and it’s harder to make friends, mostly because the kids don’t get close enough to get to know them.

I went to many schools when I was growing up and they were all the same, the teachers either smothered you with kindness and pity or totally ignored me, simply because they didn’t know what else to do with me. The kids used to call me all kinds of names, but the one I hated to be called the most was “freak”. They used to taunt me with “hey three fingers” or “hey one arm”, even though I have two arms, I guess they didn’t count the smaller one.

I always heard whispering and giggling when I went by, they would laugh and point, it was like they didn’t realize that I had any feelings. I guess they seemed to think that I was also born without ears or eyes or a heart. I heard all the names and the stares and felt the pain of rejection, the feeling of being all alone.

I was always the last one picked for teams too. I was usually picked right after the over weight kid. No one ever wanted me on their team, even though I was pretty good at team games. They just didn’t want the three fingered freak on “their” team.

Kids are cruel. They don’t know how to act around other kids that are “different”, most of the time it is because these kids have never been around anyone with a deformity or disability. Then all of a sudden when they start school, they are suddenly faced with all kinds of new and different people. They don’t know why they are different or how they got that way and it scares them, so they lash out in the way that kids do and they tease and they taunt and that makes the different person stay away from them, unless of coarse that different person is me.

I have been told I was kicked out of kindergarten on the first day. This was because someone made fun of me and I obviously didn’t like it so I hit them in the face with my lunchbox. I don’t remember that one, but I know that my reaction wasn’t always good when I was made fun of. I do remember times that I lashed out at other kids as I got older for making fun of me, and I also even started sticking up for other kids that were getting made fun of. I know I was in a few fights, most of the time the teachers ended up just breaking it up. I assume I wasn’t punished because they felt sorry for me or at the least understood why I had gotten into the situation.

The problem with kids lashing out at people like me is that it makes us feel alone, upset, and in general bad about ourselves. We have lower self esteem, and a harder time making friends. Growing up I found it extremely hard to make friends because the one or two kids in the school that would want to try and get to know me, would end being ridiculed for hanging out with me. Therefore my friendships didn’t last long, not that I blame them. It is hard enough to go through school and worry about what someone might say about you without helping it along and being friends with the freak. School is the place where kids start to try and gain acceptance by their peers. Acceptance is very important to kids, that is why they all dress alike and have to have certain brands of clothes, if they don’t they will become “outsiders”, they wont be part of the “in” crowd. But for me…If the “in” crowd is the ones making fun of us “outsiders” then I really don’t want to be apart of that anyway.