I am naturally very shy and withdrawn. I have become less so since I worked in retail for two years, but I am still shy. And as shy kids will attest, we're the ones that more outgoing people sniff out and pick on. For me, it began in my Spanish class. I wasn't late to class, but I certainly was one of the last people to arrive, since I basically had to take a seat at a very crowded table. A redheaded girl with freckles took initiative and introduced herself. Not being rude, I said hello back and told her my name. Instantly, I was branded a *lesbian for talking to her, because this girl was supposedly one herself. I tried clearing that label from myself, but word traveled fast in that classroom, and I was the lesbian girl.
*They actually used the word "dyke," but I don't like using that word because of its unfair connotations.
The seating plan changed the next day, to our typical row seating, and as extreme bad luck would have it, I was surrounded by the more popular kids who made it their lives mission to annoy me. Every day was a new hell, wondering what they would do or say to me.
The teacher was well-aware something was going on, because you could tell from the look on my face I was uncomfortable. I could have gone to her and relayed what was happening, but I personally believe it wouldn't have a difference. She basically blamed me for making them talk, when it was them interrupting her teaching to question my lifestyle choices and whatever else popped into their minds.
Around this time, I was becoming buddy-buddy with this guy I had a crush on. This guy was friends with some of my tormentors, who by this point had the entire school looking at me like I was a giant lesbian monster out to hit on all the girls in school. Only my close female friends (none of whom were that girl who introduced herself to me that first day in class) and this boy, ignored those rampant rumors.
It was also at this time, that my tormentors started getting intense with their questioning and teasing. On Fridays, they would invite me to parties I knew didn't exist. I had a sixth sense they were setting me up for humiliation, and I wasn't about to play into their cruelty. Getting up in the morning and going to school knowing what was inevitably going to happen four days of the week (we had unusual schedules), was interesting. Despite the torment I experienced, I went to school almost every day.
I got mono around Christmas/New Year's 1997/1998, and was out of school for over a week. When I got back, after my mom informing the school I had mono because of my extended absence, the kids questioned what I had been doing and with whom I had been doing it. For the record, I didn't even have my first kiss until 2006, so my diagnosis even confused the poor physician who treated me. I was honest and said I hadn't kissed anyone, but they didn't believe me.
The torment hit its peak sometime in March/April of 1998. I came into class, sat down, and listened as the kids barraged me with question after question. By this point, I was starting to ignore them, which pissed them off. A girl came up to me, touched my head (I think, it was so long ago I forget), and walked back to her seat. Another girl, of Indian descent (who was never actually mean to me) came over and asked if I would like to borrow her mirror. I said I didn't, looking at her like she'd lost her mind, but she insisted. She said I had something in my hair. So, I took the mirror.
They had put lotion in my hair. By then, everyone in class was laughing. Our substitute teacher got mad, wondering what was going on, and started yelling. I was so humiliated, that I started crying. She at first was upset with me, until she saw the lotion in my hair. She yelled at everyone, and then sought out those who put the lotion in my hair. I think I remained in class while I used tissues to clean out my hair, light sobs of air escaping me.
Spanish was the worst of my classes, but I basically was bullied in every class except History, Science and English. Out of six classes, that's bad.
- Physical Education was basically because I didn't know how to properly put my hair into a ponytail, and because I wore slouch socks. I didn't fit the Southern California cheerleader-type profile.
- Math was two guys who most likely had a crush on me, so they picked on me. I thought I was the shit and quoted the Promenade Deck scene from Titanic, which basically made me look like an idiot. I took two Math courses, basically because I never grasped Pre-Algebra. My other Math class was uneventful.
After the lotion incident, I told my mom about what had happened. But I begged her not to do anything. My grandma, who worked for the district office, found out about it I would guess from the substitute, and told my grandpa. My grandpa was a volunteer police officer, which for anyone outside of the U.S., basically means he was a glorified truant officer. He and his retired buddies rode around in Volunteer Police cars during school hours, looking for kids that were out of school. They also patrolled after-school, making sure no one was getting beat up. And my grandpa was protective of me. Well, for the rest of the year, I was followed home by a patrol car. It wasn't subtle, either. It literally crawled beside me, which freaked me out tremendously. I was never a bad kid, and I wondered why this car would follow me from the school to the crosswalk across from the District building every single day. My mom later told me about this, and it suddenly made sense.
In May, our Spanish class went on a field trip to Old Town San Diego (which I highly recommend outsiders to visit if they're ever in San Diego), for a scavenger hunt of sorts. Basically, we had to look at the clues, and figure out which historic building they referred to. And for me, this trip was going to be a piece of cake. I led my team to all these buildings in record time, because I was deeply in love with Old Town (which I must regale you with at a later date) and I knew where everything was. It actually shocked my team, who thought I was dumb. The same happened on the trip to Disneyland, but I was left alone once we were left to fend for ourselves in the theme park.
In the end, I made it out alive. It still baffles me to this day on how I went to school in the mornings without much fuss. Because the hell I endured, I should have made my parents' lives hell with resistance. The bullying pretty much stopped after the lotion incident, since the kids realized they had got to me. They would still ask me questions, but they weren't as intense with it. One of the guys who picked on me in our remedial Math class apologized to me on the bus after-school Freshman year, stating that he was an idiot, and that he meant nothing by it. I told him it was water under the bridge, and I was fine.
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