| I had gone to kindergarten, but because of my apparently higher intellect (having learned to read so quickly), my parents sent me to a Montessori school where none of my kindergarten friends went. So on my first day at school, I hop into the bus and they all stare at me as if I had a duck sitting on my head. (Actually, it was a platypus, but they couldn't tell the difference. ;)) Anyway, they gather around me, ask me my name and what the heck I'm doing in their school ... and then, the big question: "So, Bug ... are you a poofter?" (Well, actually, they didn't say "poofter", being German and all that. It was another of the many "naughty words" that were so popular with German six-year-olds in 1991. But I digress.) I had no idea what the word meant (not having had much social interaction because of my fascination with the written word), and they wouldn't tell me. It seemed a funny thing to be, though; they were giggling all the time. So "yes," I conceded, "I might be. Now would you please tell me what that means?" They didn't. Instead, they all burst out laughing. I laughed with them, because I didn't know what else to do. It basically went downward from there. They made fun of me on a daily basis. There wasn't a lot of physical violence, though. And what there was of it consisted of shoving me into the über-icky girls' lavatory and then running away quickly. I soon learned to block out the taunting by always having a book with me that I could sort of dive into. To this day, I feel uncomfortable without a good book by my side. |
