In the middle of the third grade, my grandparents ran out of money to continue sending me to private school–not to mention the trouble with the sixth grade teacher.

This was my very first time on a schoolbus. My first time around kids I hadn’t grown up with. My first time seeing so many kids (my private school maybe had 50-75 students in total).

Already fairly shy with kids my age, I felt terrified. I wore my neighbor’s hand-me-down clothes, and shoes that were well worn out, my hair was stringy, and they did weird things with math that I didn’t understand.

I hated it.

Because of how shy I was, I was put in the Special Education classroom, and I was forced to take an IQ test with the school shrink. I was utterly humiliated and made terribly bored by the testing.

If things felt like review, or pointless to me, my mind would wander off and I’d lose any grasp on any attention I might have previously had.

When they discovered I was perfectly fine mentally, other than my tendency to get distracted which they viewed as a lack of discipline (this was before diagnosis of ADD and ADHD were a thing), they put me back into the normal third grade classroom.

I very quickly found that public school kids were not very nice. Especially to little girls with red hair that wore raggedy clothes and smelled of cigarettes. Especially if that little girl asked a lot of questions, and made sure there was less time in class to do homework.

Over time, the teacher grew quite fond of me. I was rather candid and sweet to adults, and once the teacher learned how well I could read, a stroke of laziness came about on her part. I became ‘the kid that could read and get us through English class very quickly’. However, due to my ease of distraction and that I didn’t get along very well with the other kids for whatever reason, they decided not to let me partake in the gifted program.

It was exceptionally difficult to make friends.

On the bus, I was tortured by two boys, one in the fifth grade, the other a year or two below me. They went to the same day care that I went to, and we took the same bus to school.

These boys would throw spit wads and such at me on the bus, and I’d hide in the seat behind the driver and cry, wanting nothing more than to get off the bus every time. I hid during recess so that the boys didn’t bother me–no one wanted to play with me, anyway, and I was too shy to push myself into a group.

Being a new kid was exceptionally rough. I was by no means prepared for it; I was a small fish dropped into the vast ocean.

So many people, so many parents expect that everything will be fine for children when they’re thrust into a new school. Not every child is a social butterfly. Not every child wants the attention of his or her peers. Some children are exceptionally introspective; these kinds of changes are hard.

 

When Valentine’s day rolled around, we made valentines for our parents, made boxes for our desks. We were required to get a valentine for every person in our class.

Being the new kid, I got valentines from about half the class, even though I was sure to give one to everyone myself. It cut me pretty deep. I cried. I didn’t understand why the other kids didn’t like me; why they had left me out from getting candies and cards.

The teacher did nothing.

But then again, what could she honestly do? I was the weird new kid who didn’t have any friends.