School (early years part 3)

Please be warned that this post contains details about my life that some might not be interested in reading. Any post marked as personal will contain events that are just that, personal. Feel free to continue reading only if you want to hear about my life.

Like most kids, I loved to learn, and I was always very observant. When I was 3 I remember watching my mom sew, she used to sew all our clothes. I used sit on the counter with her while she would work on the patterns and cut out the different pieces. I was loved to play with the little spiky wheel on the end of a pen like handle (used for tracing a pattern onto the fabric). I'd run that all over the counter and pretend I was making patterns. When she was sewing on her machine, she'd bring a chair over so I could sit and watch. I loved watching the needle on the machine go up and down, and the sound it made, the best fun was when she would run out of thread on one of the bobbins and she'd have to refill it through the machine. Machinery and process fascinated me. Whenever she would make a mistake, sew something she wasn't supposed to, she pull out the seam ripper and rip out all the mistakes she just made. When my mom works on anything she talks to herself aloud, she has always done this. So I could always tell how frustrated she was when she made a mistake. One day I decided that I'd help my mom out, and take out some seems for her so she wouldn't have to be so frustrated at her sewing. How happy she would be to see that I had fixed it for her. So I opened the sewing drawer, pulled out the seam ripper, and went to work on her sundancer (mini trampoline) that she used every morning as part of her exercise routine. I was nearly halfway finished ripping a nice long hole down the center of the black plasticy fabric, when my mom walked in wonder why I was being so quiet. I just knew how happy she was going to be, but I was mistaken, she wasn't very happy at all.

My mom was also a good source of random information whenever she would take me out while she did her shopping and errands. While in the car, she would always point out interesting things that we passed. She would tell me what street we were on, and what direction we were going. Utah streets for the most part are in a grid, with a naming scheme that uses numbers and directions: for example 100 north, 300 west. So she would tell me where we were, and where we wanted to be, and how many streets each direction we needed to travel to get there. She would also tell me different stories about the town, what used to be where, and what happened to it, or when something was built and where different, people lived. I think it was partly a way to keep me quiet, and just her talking to herself aloud, but I loved the bits of information. She also read to me every night. We had a huge collection of children's books from my older brothers and sister, and from Christmas and birthday gifts. I couldn't go to sleep without her reading something to me.

I also loved watching the kids’ shows on the public television channel. Every morning I'd wake up to watch Sesame Street while I ate breakfast or right before. At lunch, I'd watch Sesame Street again followed by Mr. Rogers, and then it was time for my nap. In the afternoon right as my sister would get home from school on the bus, I’d watch 3-2-1 contact. That was my favorite show of them all. It didn't matter if I had seen the show before, even 5 or 6 different times, I still loved to watch them. Before we had a VHS machine of our own, every once and a while I (and my sister) was able to convince my mom to rent us some movies to watch. The local video store had a pretty good deal that if you rented a certain amount of videos at one time, they would let you rent the machine for really cheap or free. She would let my sister pick out a couple of videos, I’d get to pick a couple, and then my mom would get one for her and dad to watch. I always picked a nature video, national geographic presents, anything with wildlife, nature, geology or space. I think I watched every single nature video they had in the store at least 3 times.

I had quite a few neighbor friends that were my age growing up. One was one year older than I was, and I can remember him getting off the bus near our house and walking home every lunch hour. (Kindergarten was a half day, and he had the morning schedule.) For some reason he would always whistle on his way home and I wanted so badly to learn to whistle. For some reason I thought I wouldn't be able to learn to whistle until I started to go to school. I was so excited that soon I'd be old enough to go to school, and then I could whistle too, just like him. Weird I know, but that is what I thought. I was also excited to go to school, because my mom told me that I'd get to learn new things every day, and I loved to learn.

I can't really remember my first day, but I do remember my mom taking me to the school a couple weeks before I started and getting me signed up. Before she took me inside, she told me she needed me to understand something. She told me that in order for me to be able to go to school that year, that for school, I had to tell everyone that my birthday was October 31, instead of November 1 like it really was. (The cutoff date for school, was you had to be 5 on or before Oct 31) She said that she thought I was ready to go to school and didn't want to have to wait for another year. So if anyone asked me what my birthday was, I'd have to tell them October 31, or else she or I would get into trouble. (Of course, the school required a birth certificate, and I still have it, the one she put whiteout on and wrote my birthday in as Oct 31.) I really didn't like the fact that I was going to have to lie, but I didn't want to get into trouble, and I was always told that I God wanted me to do what my parents told me to do. It was a real problem in my head, lying is bad and I hated when my sister always lied to me, disobeying my parents and getting them in trouble is bad, what should I do? I agreed that I'd tell anyone that asked, that my birthday was one day earlier (she told me it wasn't a big lie, because I was born around 6am, and honestly she was in hospital on Halloween night, and was trying get me born that night, but I wouldn't cooperate). So every year, every class celebrated my birthday on Halloween, and I had to feel guilty inside it really was just a lie.

I loved school right from the start, but I hated waiting at the bus stop for the school bus. My sister really didn't like the fact that she now had to take me along with her on the same bus that she was riding to school; another place that used to be hers, and now she had to share with her little brother. I knew how she felt, she didn't have to say it aloud, and I could read her like a book by now. She would get on the bus and go sit with her friends and made sure that I didn't sit anywhere near her. Some older neighbor boys came to the same bus stop. One of them had this bulldog, that used to escape from their yard (across the dirt / sagebrush field) and come down into ours, and I was extremely afraid of it. I was afraid of all dogs, I hated them, but I loved kitties. They started to tease me at the bus stop, and threaten to bring his dog to the bus stop the next day. I was terrified and didn't know what to do, and my sister, well she didn't really do anything to help. Of course, I didn't want to go to school anymore, and my dad found out the reason why. He was angry that my sister didn't defend me or help, he yelled at her, and told her next time she needed to stick up for me. She cried and tried to weasel her way out of it, how was she, a girl she said, supposed to stand up to these older boys (I think they might have been 2 - 4 years older than her)? He told her, girls can fight, she has fingernails, next time she should scratch them. The next morning we went to the school bus stop, and she told them not to tease me anymore, or she would scratch their eyes out. (Looking back, I really have to wonder what the deal was with these boys. She had been going to the same bus stop, and they had as well for a number of years. Did she put them up to picking on me? Or were they just being mean? I can specifically remember a few times, she told her friends how to tease me while we rode the bus, she knew the best way. Even before I started school, she and her friends would tease me whenever they came over, it was fairly common, perhaps these boys just picked up on the fun.)

The teasing that started on the bus ride to school followed me into the school. Eventually the word was out, that I was the kid everyone should pick on. It didn't help that I had a different view of girls than all the other boys at the time. I didn't run away from them, or call them names, pull their hair, or think they had cooties. I was fine with talking with them, sharing things in class, or hanging out with them at recess on the monkey bars. To me it wasn't boys against girls, and I didn't tow the party line on the playground, I would speak up and tell the truth even if it would get one of the boys in trouble. (Odd how the good ole boys club was alive and well even in kindergarten.) It also didn't help that I was a teacher’s pet, I loved to learn and I loved to answer questions. That got me in trouble with my peers as well.

The teasing only got worse as the years went on in school. (I saw other kids being teased, but never to the degree and non-stop like it was for me. General teasing I understood, they were just goofing around with the other kids. Not with me, they were serious and it was a different kind of teasing.) Kids that were my friends on Sunday at church turned mean at school during the week. (You need to understand at that time, St. George was like 80% LDS, and where I grew up, it was more like 90% +) Kids that I would play with after school were nice at home around their parents, but in school, it was a different story. I played all the sports growing up and wasn't that bad at them, but still I was always picked last and always treated the roughest while playing. If it was possible to get hurt while playing, it was always me. It was so confusing for me; I cried many nights and asked my mom why do kids act like this? She would always tell me, they are kids, they haven't grown up yet, they are going to be mean and I just have to grow a thick skin. She would also tell me that I should say silent prayers and then Heavenly Father might be able to "soften their hearts" if they would listen to him. She would also tell me that I was a very special soul in the pre-existence, that Satan knew who I was, and that he was trying his best to ruin my life. He wanted to destroy me or break me down while I was young so that I wouldn't be able to accomplish the mission that the Lord had in plan for me. I needed to be strong and not let him affect me, or let others that he was using affect me.

I was a smart kid, and always did well on the tests, but homework was another matter. I was always so bored with schoolwork. Every year they spent the majority of the year going over the same things we had learned the years before. If I could finish the homework or assignments during class time, I usually got them finished and handed in. Stuff we had to take home and work on I'd never finish. Every year it was the same thing, my parents would go to parent teacher conference and the teacher would tell them I was smart and doing good in class, but I never handed in my homework. I would always be yelled at by my dad, and many times, I was grounded, and had to do all the old homework assignments that I never handed in. It was so boring to me; I wanted to learn new things, not the same old things. In 6th grade, we had to take the state SATs and when the results came back, I was called over to talk with my teacher while other kids were working on something in class. She sat me down, looked me in the eyes, and said, "You are a lazy, lazy boy. All this time I didn't know if you were really learning in my class. You were slipping by and taking it easy in my class, weren't you?" I wasn't quite sure what she was talking about, but she showed me the test results. She told me that the average for a 6th grade student was a score of 6 on all these tests and I was scoring ranges from 8 to 12. (she told me that it was equivalent as if an 8th or 12th grader was taking the same test as us, but really I don't know if that was really the case or not) She said she wasn't going to allow me to get away with just being lazy in her class anymore and that she was going to make sure I did all the work she assigned to the class and got the grades I should have been getting. Over the school years up to that point, I had unconsciously learned that it wasn't worth it to stand out in class; it would only cause me to be picked on more. I also had learned that doing the same old things repeatedly every year was pointless. I'd just have to do the same things next year, so why bother.

At the start of 6th grade was when we had to pick what type of "performance art" we would be interested in going forward in our education. The choices were chorus, drama, or band. Of course, we could decide later in the coming school years to change our minds, but usually you picked one in 6th grade and stayed with that choice throughout high school. If you did decide to switch later, you would be at a complete disadvantage without all the practice and experience of the other kids that stayed with their original choice. I decided to go with band, and that was always the most common choice. At the beginning of the year, we spent the first few weeks in band class getting to try out all the different instruments to choose which one was our "favorite." I had wanted to play the drums for as long as I could remember. It had always been my dream to play the drums, and now I felt that this was finally going to be possible. My parents had something else in mind; they said that drums were too expensive. My second choice would have been the flute. Again, my parents said, no, I think they were concerned with the teasing I might receive from playing the flute. To me, what was just one more thing that someone could use to tease me? The real reason for my parents not wanting me to play the drums or flute really came down to an event and story that I had heard many times in my childhood. Before I was born, my mom said that one day she had a vision of this young adult boy, standing in front of her holding a trumpet at his side. She had the same vision happen a couple of times and convinced her that she needed to have one more child. She said that she had an overwhelming feeling that there was one more spirit child waiting to come down to earth and be part of their family. So drums and flute were out of the question, it was obvious that it was predetermined that I was to play the trumpet.

The first year of middle school, 7th grade is when I couldn't take anymore of the picking on and teasing in school. There were two kids on the bus at the end of 6th grade really started giving me a bad time. So much worse, that anything encountered before. I had hoped that by the start of 7th grade, they would have forgotten about me a little, and not make it their job in life to make my life a living hell on the bus. I was wrong, they remembered me, and started right back in where they left off. Also, my oldest brother was a schoolteacher at that middle school, and we knew from when my sister had gone there that the teasing was going to be rough from that. The kids at that school hated my brother as a teacher, every year the new 7th graders learned from the older kids rumors, stories and which teachers to hate. My brother was the top of their list; I had no idea what kind of grief I was in for. The stories floated around that he was a pedophile, liked to look up girl’s skirts, or make girls stay after class while he stared at them. They also said he was queer and would try to feel up the boys as well. The stories were numerous and all horrible. I didn't let anyone at the first of the year know that he was my brother, but when they asked because we shared the same last name, if he was related, of course I told the truth, that yes he was my in fact my brother. So on top of everything I had to deal with normally, I was now a target for everything they were saying about my brother as well. I was a proxy for my brother; I was asked if I was a pervert as well, if I was queer, if we did things together. I was pushed around in the hallways and called names, tripped and spit on. It wasn't just those in my class anymore, it was the entire school of kids, all grades.

I couldn't take it anymore, and I was done, nothing was worth this. My parents took me in to see my class school councilor. I had to explain to him what was going on, and who the main instigators of the problems were. I had to pick a couple kids that were the worst, and he would see if he could get them to stop. He couldn't come out and declare that everyone in the school needed to treat me better, because the whole of the school would never listen and it would only escalate the abuse. I told him about the two kids on the school bus, and he said he would take care of things. Later I found out from the two boys that he had called them in with their parents and told them they needed to shape up, that treating other kids as if they were treating me was not acceptable. They were told that they weren't allowed to tell anyone else that they had been talked to, and that they should just ignore me and leave me alone. Their parents had no idea what was going on, but the two boys really hated me for "ratting" on them. They ended up just ignoring me, and they got their group of friends on the bus to ignore me as well. They pretended I didn't exist, sat on me like I wasn't there, or tried to walk through me, and I was ok with that, I knew that game from my sister, and I could survive it.

Continue reading: Family (early years part 4)