Middle school, friends and bullies

Remembering my middle school days and reflecting about my non-experience with bullying.

Bullies

I've been reading several posts as of recently about awful experiences with bullies during school years, or even earlier. Once again, I'm confronted with the baffling fact that I have never had this in my life, even though I should have. Everything was perfectly aligned for me to be a perfect target...

Read the Full Post by Simone Silvestroni on Minutes To Midnight

A couple days ago I read the article linked above, where Simone recounts his experiences with bullying at school. I think I resonated with him a bit, since I ended up pretty much unscathed as well, never experiencing any real problems first hand. However, a ton of core memories got unlocked after reading it, so I decided to write them down here!

My experiences going into middle school—or la secu as we called it—started with a bit of a letdown, after I was told I would not be going to the same one as everyone else in my classroom. Apparently that middle school didn’t have good fame, even though it was the closest to my primary school, and I even went to a school trip there, and got to see some cool lab equipment; it was actually pretty outdated for the time—I had nothing to compare it to anyway. This decision by my parents would turn out just fine, I think I was upset about it, but I can’t really remember the feeling.

I got enrolled in a school quite far from the neighborhood I was used to, turns out that a family friend and member of our church was an art teacher there, he was truly was a great example for me, a real artist, who left his mark in my life and that of many others, who sadly passed away during the COVID pandemic. Thanks to him I eventually learned the guitar and keyboard, quite a bit of drawing techniques, and many origami figures, but most importantly, to be respectful, to be kind, and to use my gifts to help others.

He gave me a ride to school every morning. Her daughter was going to be my classmate too, I kind of avoided her at first, I felt like she didn’t like me or something, making the initial commutes a bit weird. Thankfully this changed over time and while never the best of friends—I kinda didn’t interact much with girls, which is still true today lol—we were cool.

Back in primary school I was pretty much at the top of the class, the one kid who did everything as it should be done, and I was part of la escolta escolar, a group of students who carried the Mexican flag around school on Mondays and during special events and ceremonies.

Now those days are in the past, I found myself in a classroom where no kid knew me—except for the teacher’s daughter I already mentioned .

I think movies like Spider-Man, shows like Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide or Malcom in the Middle and similar media made me believe I would end up inside a trash can or something. I thought for sure I would get harassed into doing someone’s homework or get ridiculed in one way or another as the random kid that didn’t even live in the neighborhood.

To try and avoid all this, I pretty much decided from the start that I would do just enough to pass with good grades, but not that good, I would be kinda smart, but not the smartest. You know, be like an NPC in a game or something.

Let’s just say those expectations were greatly exaggerated.

In fact, I ended up being on good terms with pretty much everyone.

I was a fairly shy kid with strangers, but alright with my circle of friends. I was well behaved and polite, I never cursed at people, and always tried to stay out of trouble. I wasn’t popular or anything, but recognizable by both teachers and classmates.

Turns out that if you behave well with people they usually reciprocate. People even changed around me—or that’s how it seemed to my younger self—if I was present people went from swearing every three words to doing so every few sentences! Be it respect, or just feeling uncomfortable with my presence, it was a win for me.

I think that my way of thinking—or lack there of—quite helped me in any case. I’ve never really struggled with my sense of self-worth, I was a pretty naive kid. Even today, I’m painfully unaware of what the people around me say. Even if they tell me some horrible stuff, I just laugh it off, it doesn’t affect me if it isn’t the truth, I forget most of it, and forgive it all away. I tend to value most the words of those closest to me, which is how it should be in my opinion.

I do recall a variety of nicknames I was given, many of them might be pretty inappropriate, although I can still see kids in middle school giving them today, it is something very much ingrained in Mexican culture, we will always have a nickname for you, whether you want it or not.

I didn’t particularly like referring to people by a nickname, unless it is a short for their name, or if it has stuck for so long that I don’t know what their name is, and they usually prefer it. Let’s say that whenever I get around having kids, I will not encourage such behavior from them, but they’ll have to get used to it.

I was nicknamed “Sheldon” from The Big Bang Theory, because of my awkwardness, sarcasm and being geeky I guess, “Casparin”, which is a wordplay of Casper the Friendly Ghost and “caspa” being the word for dandruff in Spanish, since I used to have a problem with that. I didn’t mind the first one at all to be honest, but the latter annoyed me sometimes, mostly because it usually came accompanied by headpats while chanting “copos de nieve!”

Despite this, I can’t help but smile writing this today. It is totally understandable to hate nicknames given to you by bad actors and bullies, and I am not here to invalidate the pain a nickname can cause to many, but in my case, those nicknames were given among friends and schoolmates, they might be offensive and out of line nowadays, but pretty much everyone in my circle was given something similar: big nose? Squidward, spiky hair? Pineapple head, big forehead? Jimmy Neutron, blonde hair and white skin? el Guero, a weird last name? you know the drill, it was part of life back then, but again, I usually avoided them myself.

Soccer really helped strengthen the bond among us boys. I was always either goalkeeper or defense, and we used to play with disposable plastic bottles, half-filled with water. This was quite common, because nobody had a soccer ball, or nobody wanted theirs to get lost after kicking it over the fence and having it roll downhill—which is exactly what happened to mine the one time I decided to bring it to school.

I like to think I earned my classmates’ respect because I didn’t mind putting my body in danger for the sake of stopping a rather dangerous projectile from scoring a goal.

That’s the most danger I remember going through honestly, some shots flying directly to my head or my chest and the like. I am still amused that I never got any serious injuries doing that, thank God.

I recall a couple of fights among classmates. My school was big, and those sorts of things happened sometimes, most of the time because of the soccer field.

Here in Mexico most sports fields at schools are the size of a basketball one, usually the soccer goal also has a basket higher up, and the field has two small holes on opposite sides to insert the volleyball net posts easily—nobody ever did that because those posts were super heavy. Of course, having to share was a problem sometimes, but I stayed away from those conflicts.

There is only one time I can remember where I almost got into a fight, and it wasn’t even against some bad person, just a conflict between friends, and I can’t even remember the reason for it, all I can remember is that he tried to kick me and I grabbed his leg, he lost his balance and fell, and then a teacher saw us. Not much else happened, I apologized and we were good later on. I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel like I had Spider-Man reflexes when I managed to parry his attack though.

Right when I was finishing this, I finally remembered something that might be the closest I got to being “ridiculed” or “mistreated,” from a certain point of view.

As I said before, the school was big, and my group of friends liked having lunch all the way to the opposite side of the tiendita, I was the one who became the errands boy, going to buy “lunch” for the others. I say lunch between quotations, because most of the time I just bought super unhealthy—but extremely tasty—snacks, like Tostitos, Crujitos, Doritos and the like, usually with a ton of crema y salsa to make them even spicier—the essential element of Mexican gastronomy. Of course accompanied by drinks, most of the time Pau Paus or Sprite.

In reality, this was actually something I did willingly. Most of the time someone was like “If anyone wants a peso go buy this for me.” As soon as one guy asked, I offered myself to do it, and most of the time, a couple others piled up, offering their pesos too. Every couple days, I had enough money to get my own Tostitos con crema y salsa. Besides, while carrying all the snacks I bought, I could always grab one or two chips out of each before I arrived with them, quite the sneaky thief I was, it was a win-win situation!—or maybe I had Stockholm syndrome.

My mind sometimes has wondered: “maybe they gossiped about me”, “maybe they thought I was cheap”, “maybe they just felt bad for me.” But time and time again, I just can’t really come to terms with that? Again maybe it is me choosing to see the best of the people around me, but I have many more great memories with those old friends of mine. Honestly, I am writing this more for me than for my readers out there. A day will come when these moments will blur even more than now, so I better write some of it down before it’s too late. It is good to reminisce on those good old middle school days.

This is day 73 of #100DaysToOffload

https://fosstodon.org/@joel/113190143611378287

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