My first grade school years.

Not fitting in and getting into trouble

I really cannot remember any times that I was considered odd during my childhood before attending grade school. Maybe there were people at church (I attended church as a child but not an LDS church) who saw me as a little strange and one time while camping me and my brother asked a woman if we can play with her daughter who was our age and she made very clear that WE WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO PLAY WITH HER DAUGHTER. As she was saying this she was looking at me as if she was talking directly to me as if she wouldn't mind if it was just my brother but she for some reason didn't want me anywhere near her daughter! I figured that it was just that some people are mean and even though it really hurt me, I should get over it. How she acted, I gather she thought that I would sexually assault her daughter when I was at an age that I didn't even know about the birds and the bees and when I thought about sex it was when you are asked if you are a male or female. I really began to learn how different I was when I started Kindergarten. I knew that I was different in some way but couldn't figure out why others refused to be friends with me and why some people who were my friends and teachers would get mad at me and no longer talk to me. Why would some classmates tell me to get lost right when I introduced myself to them without giving me a chance to see that I am a normal schoolkid like they are? I really didn't notice it at the time but teachers seemed to be watching me more closely than other students. I don't remember my Kindergarten registration but I do remember going to some University of Utah medical clinic in Salt Lake City when I was a kid. I later found out that during registration for Kindergarten, a teacher noticed that I bounced a ball in an odd way and that she was concerned that I was mentally challenged or in her words Retarded. My parents took me to a specialist at the University of Utah (a recommendation from this teacher) who concluded that I wasn't mentally challenged and from how my parents talked about it, the specialists wondered why this teacher even thought that I was mentally challenged. I ended up enrolled in Special Education classes for my entire time in my first elementary school which isn't much fun since students already saw me as different and the added label of a Special Ed student gave students even more reasons to believe I was different and they would make fun of me. I remember that I never heard of the word "retard" until students started calling me one and I had no idea that they meant it as an insult. I even went along with these students and admitted that I was "retarded" even though I had no idea what being retarded meant. During grade school I was constantly in trouble and ended up in the principals office often for disturbing class and being lazy and unwilling to do my schoolwork/homework. I was considered lazy but in reality I was focused on other things such as playing with Lego(r) blocks instead of doing my homework and during class often didn't pay attention. I should have realized how important it was to do my homework and pay attention during class instead of daydream and play with lego blocks when I got home. I remember one time in the first grade I didn't want to do math exercises and answered math problems with random numbers such as 5+5 = 1. I still wonder why I did this. This gave students who were already harassing me more ammo to prove in their minds that I am a "retard". In addition, teachers probably saw this as an indication that I simply couldn't handle the classwork and I was soon in a special education math class. If I wasn't disturbing class, I also had a habit of spending recess alone instead of playing with others which is considered unusual for a schoolkid. I would just walk around the school building, sit and watch others play but not participate if asked by other students. Sometimes I would start daydreaming and be in my own world. It seemed I preferred to be alone instead of playing a game of football during recess. Sometimes I would hang out with female students for some strange reason and play things such as Hopscotch or jumping ropes-I didn't play with dolls or anything like that or participate in manicures/pedicures, hair styling, etc nor did I do anything that would be considered mature adult activities. I seemed to enjoy being with schoolgirls when most guys my age avoided girls and spent time with male classmates. Other times I would hang out with the adult who was in charge of monitoring students during recess and talk about things such as current events, and things that interested me that only an adult could understand such as why is the sky blue and what is the difference between a Democrat or Republican? and several volcano and space shuttle questions which bored and bugged most of the playground supervisors but I didn't realize I was being boring or bugging them. It seemed that I had an easier time talking to adults and sometimes girls instead of my male classmates. Maybe because girls and adults were accustomed to being nicer to people than young men and a playground supervisor most likely isn't going to tell a student to get lost when they are tired of talking to a student, they will answer questions and try to give hints that they would rather I spend time with other students which unfortunately I had troubles reading. Teachers saw me hanging around with female students and adult playground supervisors which obviously raised some eyebrows but I had no idea that I was acting strange. At the time adult playground supervisors committing sexual offenses was very rare but think of if I went to school today. In addition, grade school kids committing sexual crimes was unheard of. There were crazy adults and kids back then but not as many as today when it seems every day there is a teacher or other school official having an inappropriate relationship or sexually molesting a student and students doing the same. I had no idea how different I appeared to my teachers and my classmates when the average student would have easily figured this out. I would try to reach out and be friends but most students rejected me considering me weird and as I mentioned they would offer me a chance to play sports with them but I would turn down their offer because I was interested in other activities. It also seemed that I lacked the social skills that classmates had and a lot of times preferred to be alone. I was always seen as boring, rude, and weird but I had no idea why I was seen this way by others. At times I did want to be with people but didn't know how to go about initiating friendships. It was like everyone else naturally picked up the ability to communicate (like an animal naturally learning to survive in the wilderness) while I struggled at communicating and making friends. I would attempt to make friends by seeking attention by telling ridiculous stories, disrupting class thinking I was being either funny or smart (when I was really being an ass), and try getting peoples attention by crying. Sometimes students would act like they were my friend to try to get me to do something that would get me into trouble and sometimes it worked for them since it was hard for me to determine if they were genuine friends or playing some dirty joke on me to get me into trouble. One student in the first grade told me to write on the chalkboard with colored chalk which I later found out after cleaning up my writings was hard to remove. He told me the teacher asked him to decorate the chalkboard with these colored pieces of chalk and he wanted me as his "friend" to help. I didn't notice it but he didn't participate as I wrote on the chalkboard with these colored pieces of chalk. My teacher walked in and I got into trouble. Another time this same student tried to get me to pull the fire alarm but after the colored chalk incident and knowing that the only time you pull the fire alarm is if there really is a fire, I realized I couldn't trust him and he was trying to get me into trouble. I also seemed to have a poor sense of knowing what is appropriate and inappropriate behavior which also got me into a lot of trouble. I remember I got mad at a student and during an argument, I said "God Dammit!" as if it was nothing which wasn't something you say in a grade school in the 1970s, it may be different today but this was considered at the time to be almost as bad as saying the F word. Everyone quieted down after I said it and it was like the movie A Christmas Story when Ralphie said the "F dash dash dash word" while helping his old man change a tire. I ended up in the principals office and my parents were called about what I had said. I would talk about things that interested me but was considered inappropriate to talk about such as an airplane that crashed at an airshow in town. I constantly talked about it and I didn't realize how inappropriate it was to talk about this crash which resulted in the death of the pilot. Think if this pilot's wife was my teacher or his children attended my school! I talked about it as if it was some cool story not realizing that it a tragedy. I also liked to talk about events such as fires and car crashes even though these were tragic events especially if someone was injured or killed. It was like I had no empathy for the unfortunate people who had their house burn down losing all their precious possessions and a place to live and possibly some loved one was injured or killed in the fire which adds to the trauma of a house fire. It would be very tragic to see your own house burn down even if all your loved ones were able to escape. I also talked about tragic car crashes and crimes which are just as inappropriate and for some reason I couldn't figure out that it would be much better to talk about something positive like a weather forecast with very nice weather.

Special Ed classes, educators testing me, being moved to my other grade school

I was a frequent visitor to the Special Education Department in my first school. I would get help on math, vocabulary, and almost every other subject. I probably spent about a fourth of my school day in special ed classes in my first school. I also was called in for special occasions where I would do things like put together some puzzles made of red and white blocks which I think was an IQ test. The Special Education Department saw that there was something wrong with me but they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me since their IQ tests probably came out normal so they didn't know what to think. I still don't realize the hell my parents must have went through constantly being called by teachers and probably being given advice on how to parent when they had two other kids who were doing fine in school so it appears nothing was wrong with their parenting. I never was allowed to go to these meetings so I have no idea what was discussed but my parents were very desperate asking me what it will take to get me to perform better in school. Like always, I was oblivious to the situation and didn't realize how much my parents were concerned about me. Will they have to send me to a psychiatrist? A private school? What will it take for me to be a normal student so they don't keep getting called to meetings with educators in my first grade school. My parents were called to one final meeting with the educators from my first grade school (neither I nor my parents knew this would be the last meeting). I didn't think much of this meeting until my parents came home from this meeting and told me that I would be going to another school. I asked them how long and they said a couple of weeks. I don't know if they knew how long I was going to be there, they may have been told that I would only be there a couple of weeks too. After seeing a school special on the hardships people have when they move to a new school, I was devastated but figured that I would eventually be returned to my first school since it was only two weeks. I ended up spending the rest of my grade school years (both the fifth and sixth grade) at my other school.