Blog: memory lane- the guided tour
The last of the backlog! This was posted on 12/28, though it was actually WRITTEN a couple weeks before.
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preliminary note: there are SPOILERS here for the 12/9 episode of [H]ouse.
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I went to a dinky little private elementary school. It was pre-K thru 8; I was there from K to 4th. The social scene was fairly simple. There were two classes of about 15 kids per grade, and you only associated with those in your grade. (Unless you had an older or younger sibling. Even kids who'd been held back a year soon stopped talking to their former classmates.) You had a vague knowledge of the kids in the grade below (whom you felt far superior to) and the ones in the grade above. These last were always referred to by class ("the fifth graders"), and the most popular kids in your grade always observe them closely, as if they hope to discover the secret of being that much older. Of course, no respect felt for the older grade can ever be shown or admitted to, because they clearly express their superiority.
Within my grade, there were two cliques- the popular kids and the misfits (more specifically, those who felt the need to play soccer at lunch every day, and those who didn't). Individual kids mostly fell into one group or the other, but I knew about eight or so in my years there who possessed enough social dexterity to run with both groups, and a couple who hung with the misfits by choice (or so I assume- they appeared to be popular enough to have been accepted into the daily soccer games fairly painlessly).
I was a misfit, and there were only two other kids I knew who also fell definitively into that category (both of whom I still talk to and might conceivably read this, so: Robin, Kelsey, I respect you all the more for hanging out round the outskirts of the field with me, 'kay?). All in all, out of the about 30 or so kids who were in my grade at any one time (a few kids came and went each year), I'd say only about eight were actually consistently friendly to me. By the rest of the grade, I was shunned.
Still, though, the friends I had were great ones. I'm still in touch with three of them, even kind of dated one (it was eighth grade, and not very serious).
And the rest of the kids? They teased me. I remember the morning after snack that J---- Z------ convinced me to tell her who I liked- "I won't tell anyone, I promised!" she repeated, over and over. I gave her the name of the boy I was fixated on that particular week. All the girls of the 'it crowd' knew I liked him by lunch.
And then there were the times they were nice to me. When I got assigned to do some classwork with the first person to ever looked me in the eye and give me a blatant insult ("Freak!"), she was nice to me. The best friend of the girl who, had it been high school, would have been both head cheerleader and prom queen, could, when isolated from that girl's clique, be very kind to me. (Hell, she was a nice person, that I knew at age seven. She just wasn't brave enough to defy her friends.) And them the 'prom queen' herself cozied up to me (under circumstances I can't quite remember) until our mothers organized a Disneyland trip. We went, and A- was a friend that day, goddamn it, and I allowed myself to hope that school would be better now. But very soon, she returned to her old ways.
On the most recent new episode of House (way back on 12/9- Joy to the World, the Christmas ep) Kutner really went off on this high school guy who had bullied the PotW (Patient of the Week, for those who don't know the lingo) at school. Taub pulled Kutner off and told him to stop projecting (he assumed Kutner had been bullied as a kid. Kutner denied this). Kutner looked uncomfortable, and I hazarded a guess: Kutner wasn't bullied- he was a bully, and he'd gone off on this dude out of feelings of misplaced guilt.
I didn't devote much thought to this, but at the end of the episode I was proved right, when Kutner goes to this apartment. When the guy opens the door, he says, "I just wanted to apologize for all the shit I put you through in high school."
This scene reinforced the fleeting thought I'd had earlier, the one which had caused me to voice my hypothesis: being bullied stays with you. Kutner would not have been raging angry at that guy if he'd been bullied- the anger would have been cooler, more subtle and passive. When you are conditioned from an early age (in my experience, at least- for me it began when I was 5) to be the prey of social carnivores, you pick up some self-preservation instincts. The guy Kutner apologized to at the end of the ep got a wary look as soon as Kutner identified himself- he almost seemed poised on that fight-or-flight instinct (but that would have been no choice for him- when you're bullied, you learn not to fight, they are always better than you, they will always win, you just have to keep your head down and hope that they spare you).
There are times that it's still with me. The first time I saw the girl J----, now attending my school, she said hi. She said, "Hey, Emma, it's J----. How you doing?" I wanted to bolt, but made myself reply, "Um. Good. How are you?" The next couple times we saw each other she waved or smiled at me. Each time my heart started pounding and I tried to look away. I was irrationally sure that she was trying to cultivate in me a false sense of security before making me the butt of some cruel joke. Nowadays, we ignore each other.
But, yeah… this stuff stays with you. Hear your named called out by an unfamiliar voice in the hallway- keep walking, suppress the urge to freeze, to turn around, until you can identify them (better this than to turn and find no one looking your way, then laughter when you look away). Sitting quietly in class with someone else's conversation as background noise, you hear something that might have been your name, the speakers are laughing, making fun- tense, automatically attentive, but you can't turn around, can't alert them (because maybe they're talking about you on purpose and if you look they would win). Try to go back to reading your book or doing the homework- but it's hard to focus, your concentration unwillingly and unavoidably pulled to the conversation behind you (you've overheard some things this way. Almost none of them are about you.
These instincts (mostly cultivated in middle school, where I was a rare gazelle among the lions) have all but left me now. That girl (gazelle) I was is barely there. But every now and then, something causes her to rise again. And then she says, You may have forgotten. But I haven't, and I can't stand being laughed at.
She remembers what to do, and I let her have free reign. After all, she's only doing what she knows best to protect us both.
.
.
.
preliminary note: there are SPOILERS here for the 12/9 episode of [H]ouse.
.
.
.
I went to a dinky little private elementary school. It was pre-K thru 8; I was there from K to 4th. The social scene was fairly simple. There were two classes of about 15 kids per grade, and you only associated with those in your grade. (Unless you had an older or younger sibling. Even kids who'd been held back a year soon stopped talking to their former classmates.) You had a vague knowledge of the kids in the grade below (whom you felt far superior to) and the ones in the grade above. These last were always referred to by class ("the fifth graders"), and the most popular kids in your grade always observe them closely, as if they hope to discover the secret of being that much older. Of course, no respect felt for the older grade can ever be shown or admitted to, because they clearly express their superiority.
Within my grade, there were two cliques- the popular kids and the misfits (more specifically, those who felt the need to play soccer at lunch every day, and those who didn't). Individual kids mostly fell into one group or the other, but I knew about eight or so in my years there who possessed enough social dexterity to run with both groups, and a couple who hung with the misfits by choice (or so I assume- they appeared to be popular enough to have been accepted into the daily soccer games fairly painlessly).
I was a misfit, and there were only two other kids I knew who also fell definitively into that category (both of whom I still talk to and might conceivably read this, so: Robin, Kelsey, I respect you all the more for hanging out round the outskirts of the field with me, 'kay?). All in all, out of the about 30 or so kids who were in my grade at any one time (a few kids came and went each year), I'd say only about eight were actually consistently friendly to me. By the rest of the grade, I was shunned.
Still, though, the friends I had were great ones. I'm still in touch with three of them, even kind of dated one (it was eighth grade, and not very serious).
And the rest of the kids? They teased me. I remember the morning after snack that J---- Z------ convinced me to tell her who I liked- "I won't tell anyone, I promised!" she repeated, over and over. I gave her the name of the boy I was fixated on that particular week. All the girls of the 'it crowd' knew I liked him by lunch.
And then there were the times they were nice to me. When I got assigned to do some classwork with the first person to ever looked me in the eye and give me a blatant insult ("Freak!"), she was nice to me. The best friend of the girl who, had it been high school, would have been both head cheerleader and prom queen, could, when isolated from that girl's clique, be very kind to me. (Hell, she was a nice person, that I knew at age seven. She just wasn't brave enough to defy her friends.) And them the 'prom queen' herself cozied up to me (under circumstances I can't quite remember) until our mothers organized a Disneyland trip. We went, and A- was a friend that day, goddamn it, and I allowed myself to hope that school would be better now. But very soon, she returned to her old ways.
On the most recent new episode of House (way back on 12/9- Joy to the World, the Christmas ep) Kutner really went off on this high school guy who had bullied the PotW (Patient of the Week, for those who don't know the lingo) at school. Taub pulled Kutner off and told him to stop projecting (he assumed Kutner had been bullied as a kid. Kutner denied this). Kutner looked uncomfortable, and I hazarded a guess: Kutner wasn't bullied- he was a bully, and he'd gone off on this dude out of feelings of misplaced guilt.
I didn't devote much thought to this, but at the end of the episode I was proved right, when Kutner goes to this apartment. When the guy opens the door, he says, "I just wanted to apologize for all the shit I put you through in high school."
This scene reinforced the fleeting thought I'd had earlier, the one which had caused me to voice my hypothesis: being bullied stays with you. Kutner would not have been raging angry at that guy if he'd been bullied- the anger would have been cooler, more subtle and passive. When you are conditioned from an early age (in my experience, at least- for me it began when I was 5) to be the prey of social carnivores, you pick up some self-preservation instincts. The guy Kutner apologized to at the end of the ep got a wary look as soon as Kutner identified himself- he almost seemed poised on that fight-or-flight instinct (but that would have been no choice for him- when you're bullied, you learn not to fight, they are always better than you, they will always win, you just have to keep your head down and hope that they spare you).
There are times that it's still with me. The first time I saw the girl J----, now attending my school, she said hi. She said, "Hey, Emma, it's J----. How you doing?" I wanted to bolt, but made myself reply, "Um. Good. How are you?" The next couple times we saw each other she waved or smiled at me. Each time my heart started pounding and I tried to look away. I was irrationally sure that she was trying to cultivate in me a false sense of security before making me the butt of some cruel joke. Nowadays, we ignore each other.
But, yeah… this stuff stays with you. Hear your named called out by an unfamiliar voice in the hallway- keep walking, suppress the urge to freeze, to turn around, until you can identify them (better this than to turn and find no one looking your way, then laughter when you look away). Sitting quietly in class with someone else's conversation as background noise, you hear something that might have been your name, the speakers are laughing, making fun- tense, automatically attentive, but you can't turn around, can't alert them (because maybe they're talking about you on purpose and if you look they would win). Try to go back to reading your book or doing the homework- but it's hard to focus, your concentration unwillingly and unavoidably pulled to the conversation behind you (you've overheard some things this way. Almost none of them are about you.
These instincts (mostly cultivated in middle school, where I was a rare gazelle among the lions) have all but left me now. That girl (gazelle) I was is barely there. But every now and then, something causes her to rise again. And then she says, You may have forgotten. But I haven't, and I can't stand being laughed at.
She remembers what to do, and I let her have free reign. After all, she's only doing what she knows best to protect us both.