Fourth Grade I always loved jokes. I read every joke book in the library, and owned more joke books than anyone else I knew. One day my sister called me into her room, and she had me reading jokes for her out of one of my books. All of a sudden, she pulled out a tape recorder from next to the bed. She had been recording me the whole time. I was more hurt than anything at first, because she hadn't actually wanted to listen to me, she had just been recruited to trick me into talking. The next day when my mom came to pick me up, she came in with the tape recorder and played it for my teacher. The whole way in I was practically begging her not to do it, but she did anyway. I guess it was supposed to 'help' me somehow. 'Help' me, by tricking me, embarrassing me, and making me wonder who I could trust anymore. If only someone had given me an opportunity to do something I was comfortable with, instead of forcing me into things I hated doing. It was lucky I continued to talk at home at all after this. They did another trick on me this year, and it really was lucky I didn't stop talking at home too. I was in the TV room, and my mom called me from the kitchen. I said something back, and she told me just to come out to the kitchen. I was talking as I went, and when I got there I saw my sister and her friend there. It was just another trick to make me talk in front of someone. Everyone looked so pleased that they had fooled me. And unfortunately, it worked. I started talking to my sister's friend like normal. I say 'unfortunately', because other parents might get the idea that it works. I did start talking to her, but I was always much more careful to make sure no one I didn't talk to was around before I said anything. The biggest lesson I learned in 4th grade was to always have an extra pencil. There were several times when I didn't have one, so I just sat there while everyone took notes. When my teacher would finally notice, she would yell at me to start writing. I would kneel down and dig around in my desk awhile, stopping once in a while to look up at her to indicate that I wasn't finding anything, which I already knew before I started looking. Everything would stop when this started, and everyone would watch me. I was interrupting class, and this probably had the teacher thinking I was being defiant. After a few minutes of digging, she would finally say, "Don't you have a pencil or what?" This happened enough times I would think she would have recognized right away what I was doing, but she probably just wanted to embarrass me. In high school I always made sure I had at least 2 extra pens with me, and people were always borrowing them and not returning them. They knew I wouldn't say anything. While I understand it's not easy having a friend who doesn't talk, Suzie really didn't make my life much easier. For example, we were down on the baseball field by our school one day for recess, and she was trying to teach me how to do a cartwheel. I already knew how to do it, but because I wouldn't do it there, on the field in front of everyone else, she didn't believe me. I couldn't shift my legs in class, how could I do a cartwheel? She kept getting madder and madder that I wouldn't try, and the more she yelled at me to do it, the more nervous I got. I think she eventually walked away and left me alone because I wouldn't 'try'. I was sometimes sent to a different classroom while my class went over a test I had missed when I was absent. I would be told to go to the room across the hall, so I had to either not leave and get yelled at for not listening, or go and stand there in front of another class while the teacher tried to figure out why I was there, or I had to go and get sent back and have my teacher yell at me for not going over to the other classroom. The teacher across the hall once thought I was lost and directed me to my room directly on the other side of the hallway, talking to me like I was a complete idiot. My teacher could easily have come over with me to explain why I was there, since it was about 3 steps away, but she never would. Previous | Next
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