Third Grade My school merged with another Catholic school in town, so pre-k to 3rd grade moved to the other building and everything else stayed in my original school building. I was actually pretty calm about the whole thing, I wasn't too nervous or anything. Of course, Marie left me on the first day to join the 'cool crowd'. I didn't mind that too much either, since I guess I felt she put in enough time with me and deserved to have real friends who would talk to her and who she could go places with. Then 'Suzie' came over to me and hugged me, and we became friends. Because of this merger, I got to meet the person I still refer to as 'the evil nun'. If I didn't notice her in time to run or hide when I was walking through the hallways, she would pinch the back of my neck and ask me why I didn't talk to her. She told me it was rude. This was the same nun who got mad at my class because no one knew how to pronounce 'spelunking'. I had naturally assumed the kindergarten 'bathroom incident', in which I was 'singing' in the bathroom, was forgotten. But, I was wrong. One day, our class was sitting in a circle for some activity, and we were talking about different things. Mandy, the one who started the whole rumor, suddenly decided to remind everyone about it. My teacher asked me if it was true, and I saw an opportunity to finally tell my side of the story, as much as I could. I desparately shook my head 'no!'. My teacher responded, "Yeah, you just don't want to admit it." I wanted to cry. People who had never met me before that year suddenly believed this rumor. How would people react if I really did talk, knowing how long this incident was persisting? In fact, how could I know that they wouldn't do something similar if I tripped, or did something otherwise embarrassing? I had to be terrified of doing anything, for fear that they would never forget it. We were learning a few Spanish words, and my teacher told us to make the 'r' sound, by rolling our tongues. I tried, very quietly, as the whole class was doing it and I figured no one would hear me anyway. Someone did, and they announced very loudly that I was talking. The class became silent so they could hear me. Naturally, I had stopped long before that. Any time I made any sound at all, by coughing, sneezing, laughing, moving my chair, dropping my pencil, whatever, someone would announce that I was talking. Or, the whole class would get silent and turn to stare at me, waiting for me to say something. In high school I was obsessive about taking my Vitamin C tablet every morning so I didn't get a cold. I liked that we had a signout sheet on the board for if we needed to use the bathroom. But it wasn't long before I realized that I couldn't even use that. The doors to the stalls had no locks, so someone had to hold your door shut for you. If you held it yourself, you had to announce your presence to anyone who knocked, otherwise they would push the door open. I usually just kept holding it shut, but they kept pushing. When I still didn't say anything, they would usually kneel down to look under the door. When people realized it was me, they would stay there, looking at me and talking to me, sometimes literally almost crawling under the door. I mean they would have their entire head under the door talking to me, and they wouldn't leave. They might stay there for a whole minute or more. I considered kicking them in the face, but it would be their side of the story that mattered, since I couldn't tell mine, so I didn't. While I think we tried tape recording the year before, this will be the year I will always remember. I had to record myself reading something, and take it into school for my teacher. Actually, we did record the year before, which is why I agreed to do this at all. Last year, I did it and the teacher listened to it by herself. That was what I expected this year. I hated the whole thing from the beginning, I didn't want anyone listening to me do it in the first place so I locked myself in the bathroom to be alone while I recorded myself. If that wasn't bad enough, then my mom had to replay the whole thing, so I was tortured with listening to myself. It was embarrassing. I probably felt like my mom was disappointed that one of her kids was such a failure, they had to pre-record themselves talking. I despised the sound of my voice on the tape. But, because I had to, I took it into school and gave it to the teacher, expecting her to take it into another room to listen to it. Imagine my shock and humiliation when she played it in front of the whole class. I wanted to sink down into my seat so no one could see me. Everyone could, of course, which they made obvious by turning to stare at me as they listened. This would be used against me for years, with kids telling me, "You can talk to me, I already heard you talk!" Other kids, who hadn't heard the tape recording, would then start asking all kinds of questions, like, "What does she sound like? Can she really talk?" Some kids would tell me that I had a nice voice, "don't you like your voice, is that why you don't talk, because really you have a nice voice. I already heard your voice, you can talk to me. I like your voice." We did the tape recording about 3 or 4 times, and I hated it more each time. But I did it, because I thought I had no choice. If I hadn't known that my mom would get mad at me, I would have just refused to do it. Then one day my teacher had another student bring in a tape recorder. I guess she didn't believe it was me on the tapes, since she would ask me every time if I was sure it wasn't my sister on the tape. So I was sent to another room and told to record myself saying something. I knew if I refused to go, I would get yelled at, so I went, but I knew I wouldn't say anything. I knew it would immediately be played for the whole class, so I just couldn't force the words out like I could at home. After a little while of me struggling to say something, someone came over to get me, and yes, the teacher played the tape for everyone. Since there was nothing on it, I had to go back out and try again. The same thing happened, so my teacher sent a classmate over with me to make sure I did what I was supposed to. Obviously that wasn't going to work, so I was sent over again, by myself. Eventually my teacher gave up. Sometimes my teacher would keep me a few minutes after class to talk to me, pretty much just telling me that I could talk to her and I didn't have to be afraid of her. Every time she would ask me something, she would put her ear really close to my mouth so I could whisper to her, but all I did was back off because I didn't like being that close to her. Even though she was telling me I could whisper to her if I wanted, I felt like she was trying to force me to talk. There was never any kind of attempt at making me more comfortable, just everyone telling me I could talk to them and that they wouldn't laugh or get mad or whatever. Eventually I just stopped listening to her during these 'talks'. I was so bored with being told that I could talk and no one would laugh or make fun of me (how many times was I told that, when people made fun of me because they THOUGHT I had said something). Because my fingers were so chewed up from me picking at them, she would sometimes hold my hand during our talks, and practically examine them, making me more nervous. She told me that if I was that hungry to let her know - she couldn't understand that it wasn't HUNGER making me chew on my fingers, it was my overwhelming anxiety and boredom with school. Previous | Next
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