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Confessions of the Unmedicated Mind, Volume 2: School
Confessions of the Unmedicated Mind, Volume 2: School
Confessions of the Unmedicated Mind, Volume 2: School
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Confessions of the Unmedicated Mind, Volume 2: School

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There have been books about ADHD before, but nothing quite like this funny ebook series.

Undiscovered author Benjamin Tomes outlines the distinct line between discovery and origin as he details a childhood impacted by ADHD in a world not yet familiar with the disorder.

Many have treated ADHD as a pandemic that sprang from nowhere, sapping the attention spans of scores of school-aged children. Nothing could be further from the truth, yet few have delved into our past to examine instances of the disorder before it was recognized by modern medicine. This humorous memoir entertains while it recounts life in the 1970's and 1980's, before anyone had ever heard of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

In his four part humorous memoir entitled Confessions of the Unmedicated Mind, Tomes provides an unprecedented firsthand account of ADHD. His take on a childhood impacted by the focus disorder and dysfunctional family is as hilarious as it is poignant, albeit not for the faint of heart. Despite home tumult and academic failure, Tomes would go on to become an award winning coach and successful teacher, providing an interesting perspective on an unlikely ascent from rural miscreant to urban legend.

Set primarily in the small town schools of Northern Wisconsin, Volume 2 uses heavy handed humor to deliver blunt force drama drawn from his personal war on boredom, with classrooms serving as the battlegrounds. School reads like a self-written psych report, detailing chronic underachievement, perpetual inattention and endless tales of teacher torment.
Focusing on school-based stories of inattention and calculated defiance, expect the unexpected in this laugh-out-loud summary of school in the 1980’s. Along the way, lockers are violated, field trips go bad, languages are mangled, teachers are pranked and unspeakable stunts are pulled with apples and squirrels.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateMar 1, 2014
ISBN9781310208065
Confessions of the Unmedicated Mind, Volume 2: School
Author

Benjamin Tomes

My twisted path began with a baptism into weirdness and only became more ironic and bizarre with time. A study in contrasts, my roots run deep into small town dysfunction but branched out and blossomed in poverty stricken urban chaos. The oldest of three, I was born in 1972 to nomadic parents in Milwaukee. My father was an educator. He smoked Middleton Cherry cigars and was the son of the inventor of the modern lie detector test. My mother was a plant murdering housewife who issued religious damnations with frequency, and was the youngest daughter of a bowling magnate. I was raised a Quaker. My youth resonated with a pastoral tranquility. My sister threw phones and steel tipped darts. She was twice institutionalized, but to no avail. My brother quit speaking as a child and communicated through shrugs, grunts and nods. I became an extrovert with societal disconnect. I stole circus buses, burrowed ceiling tunnels at school, and violated McIntosh apples in unspeakable ways. I celebrated failure, gleefully unaware of the undiagnosed impulse control disorder I unwittingly acquiesced to. After the completion of my compulsory education, I drove my 1964 Fairlane to college but quickly returned to pursue a career in ice making. When that melted I took up civilian work building minesweepers for the Navy. When that blew up I took up late night floor cleaning. Bedraggled and disenchanted with the deceiving allure of failure I rekindled my studies with sights set on teaching disabled children; clearly a natural progression. While in pursuit of my undergraduate degree, I altercated for sport. Despite this fashionable outlet I adapted to college with an awkward gait. I wore toy fireman's helmets and became fascinated with the Schaefer Brewery. I tackled the signs of fast food restaurants, befriended a local prowler, and took part in American tackle football as the result intoxicated boasting. I was given a radio show but was forcibly removed while on air. For a time, I was sent to Kazakhstan and the former Soviet Union, but returned. I lived in the basement of a disheveled shanty where I hosted large parties, sometimes employing burlesque ideology. This practice led me to fall under the spell of a Madisonian defector in nurse's garb. We ultimately synthesized and moved into a Provincial Tudor and purchased a bulldog hybrid from an emaciated drug house and named it Schaefer. Following my Bohemian collegiate experience, I furthered the natural progression of my alabaster life and became an urban educator in the city of my birth. I developed a sharp oblivion to my surroundings, and learned I related better to the downtrodden chaos of urban decay than the Quakerian tapestry I was woven into. I thrived in my new found borough, concocting intoxicating games such as "Invalidate the Rodent" and "Kick the Black Kid". The latter became obsolete after my pupils astutely countered with their own variation entitled "Kick the White Man", which I lost in epic fashion. Our family rapidly expanded in figurative and literal terms. A 16 year old Nubian child was born to us and certificated on a piece of spiral bound notebook paper. It was followed by an alphabetical gamut of offspring. My career was executed with a piper's flair as I achieved the impossible with widespread promulgation. Celebrated in television and print media, word of my successes in the most unlikely of places traveled across the countryside like wildfire. The departure from failure that I initiated and positive publicity sat poorly with the powers that be as well as the roots of my tree, and my precedent setting work was repudiated; as was I. Disenfranchised in Milwaukee, I hitchhiked to South Florida where I danced in hurricanes and mocked them with aplomb. I took up falconry, and became quite good until developing an allergy to feathers. In my down time, I trained cage fighters. Having left work with predatory birds I took to carnivorous big game cats and mastered them as well. While my career radiated like the Florida sunshine, a large cloud began to form overhead. I became the nemesis of a pilfering Palm Beach Socialite. The aging millionaire hipster was no match for my scrambled resistance. He was branded a felon and excommunicated from his trade. His thievery however, left us in a mild state of ruin. The run of misfortune was not over. My rambunctious tendencies were stifled after severing the symmetry of my lumbar spine while carrying a bed up a flight of steps. This put an effective end to my altercating for sport, and inspired me instead to contemplate the conventionality of my existence and need for change. With a spinal column that was rendered as a functional equal to our economic viability, we returned to our home state as financial refugees. I now reside in Wisconsin, where I celebrate my escape from Fort Windstar after serving out an eight year sentence in its wheeled confines. With the wild ways of my past now impaled by a large metal bolt, I live as a model of malcontented domesticity. I spend most of my time stalking Amish families and caring for my two young children. To pass the time on a daily basis, I utilize a panel of their plush toys for heated round table discussions on how best to solicit a human vehicle who can procure paper publication of my most interesting tales.

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    Confessions of the Unmedicated Mind, Volume 2 - Benjamin Tomes

    Confessions of the Unmedicated Mind: School

    By Benjamin Tomes

    Confessions of the Unmedicated Mind: School

    Copyright: Benjamin Tomes

    Published: February ** 2014

    First Smashwords Edition 2014

    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the author and illustrator. You must not circulate this book in any format.

    For inquiries, speaking engagements, future projects, water balloon fights, or other mayhem, please contact the author.

    Email: coachtomes@hotmail.com

    Phone: 1-262-391-7617

    Follow the author online:

    Author Website: benjamintomes.com

    Facebook: facebook.com/author.benjamintomes

    Twitter: @coachtomes

    LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/coachtomes

    Tumblr: coachtomes.tumblr.com

    Pinterest: pinterest.com/coachtomes

    This book is dedicated to all the teachers who did their best despite my worst. While it may not have looked like it at the time, I was paying attention in my own way. You are all greatly appreciated.

    Well, most of you, anyway.

    A special thank you to Jen, Ryan and Laura for their work in helping to make sure I didn’t commit first degree grammatical homicide in publishing my own work.

    SCHOOL

    Forward

    For years I wondered when I stopped being me and started being me with ADHD. Hindsight is allegedly 20/20, but I’m not so sure that rings true in self-examination. One’s perception can become their reality and the sad truth about people with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder is that they don’t often seek out treatment which allows them to sort out their own perception from their actual reality. For adults with the disorder, there’s an even better chance they had no clue they had it while they grew up.

    For some it doesn’t matter; they’re successful and have adapted without realizing it. Others were introverted and never really had incidents of comical proportions develop as an off-shoot. If you’re in jail and you have a Snickers Bar sentence, I suppose it doesn’t matter much either as you aren’t going anywhere for a while. Then again, you’re going to have time on your hands to shuffle through a mental file cabinet’s worth of memories. The time alone might help one sort them out, but keeping a theoretical Trapper Keeper in one’s head is easier said than done, even in retrospect.

    I came to the conclusion that despite appearances, there has never been a version of me without ADHD. Trying to pinpoint where it developed is really futile; logic and science confirm this. In recent years, scientists have managed to pinpoint chemicals lacking in the brain and identify thought patterns and brain waves that expose the disorder in all its naked glory. The fact that I was a pretty well behaved, seemingly focused kid in school before I hit ninth grade might be fairly tough to believe for a lot of the educators I tormented in high school.

    I was fortunate enough to have found a constructive outlet that caught the attention of my powerful hyper focus. I became involved in wrestling at a young age, giving me a base to come back to over the years. Unlike other pursuits, wrestling kept me grounded in the good way. Wrestling has a way of reflecting the complexities of life and providing a bright light for a blind squirrel to find its nuts. It’s helped this squirrel locate a stray nut or two on more than one occasion.

    For a sport that toils in somewhat relative obscurity, it is not without its stages. The sport has several grand spectacles, none more so than the NCAA DI National Championships. The 2011 version was no exception. I am admittedly biased, but do believe the grandeur associated with the event could touch a nerve with most people. With all the trappings of an ‘80’s style arena concert and all the action of any major sport condensed into two gladiators going at it with unbelievable speed and power, it is a sight to behold. The finals of the 2011 meet provided a rare mainstream storyline for everyone to embrace. I mention it, because I think it inadvertently provides a great analogy for understanding ADHD and how it can wear may different faces.

    In the 125 lbs. final, the defending NCAA champion from Iowa took on Anthony Robles, a senior from Arizona State. Robles had a nice career coming out of high school, but wasn’t’ a highly sought after recruit. Like hundreds of other talented seniors, he was hard working and an all-around great kid. If there was one thing that stood out with Mr. Robles, it was that he was missing a leg.

    There was no gruesome accident story behind it for Anthony. He was born without it, and that was the only life he ever knew. By the age of three he had quit wearing the prosthetic and instead did his best to keep up with his peers. This was no easy task in taking up a sport like wrestling where the ability to drive off of your feet and your balance are key parts to being successful. As the years went on, he improved and achieved, but never quite seemed to overcome the limb he was born without. A talented wrestler in high school, he was largely ignored by traditional powers. More than a few heads were turned when he signed with ASU. Those heads were turned further when he became a starter as a freshman.

    Robles started for the better part of all four years at ASU, and had a distinguished career, but his career had a fascinating arc to it. His senior year was a lesson in dominance. Ultimately, he completely dismantled the defending champion as a senior in college, winning an individual national championship for a program that is not a college power.

    So what changed? He’s always been missing the leg. He’s been wrestling since a young age. It’s not that he wasn’t successful in the past; he was a two-time All American going into that year. His senior year though, he took the steady progression he displayed over the previous three years and skyrocketed.

    I would argue that very little changed. By all accounts, he was always an extremely hard worker. What finally kicked in was that his work ethic, dedication and perseverance ultimately allowed the missing limb to go from a limitation to an advantage. For those who have ever watched or tried wrestling, the thought that missing a limb such as one of your legs might seem to be absurd. In a sport which classifies its participants by weight however, it put the frame of an athlete who should have been forty to fifty pounds heavier against smaller opponents.

    I said it was an advantage, not an unfair advantage. For years it wasn’t to his benefit, but was building to that. It’s also worth mentioning, that smaller does not mean lighter. There was nothing unfair about his dominating win, or the fact that he had adjusted his style to make him more adept at a few holds from the top position where one’s leg can get in the way and sometimes restrict movement while riding a person.

    The leg was always missing, but as he grew older and kept working at it, it gave him superior upper body strength and in all likelihood probably made him better. Over time, one could argue that the absence of the leg had gone full-circle to become an asset.

    And such is the case for many with ADHD; whether they treat it consciously or not. The disability which can be so limiting, especially in the cold, rigid world of education, many times becomes an asset as someone finds their niche. Finding the niche is the hard part. Having grown up with ADHD during a time when nothing was known about it, it’s hard to even know at times if hindsight is even fully possible in light of the lack of knowledge that educators had of the disorder.

    My take on the impact ADHD had on my childhood has the benefit of working for 12 years as a teacher. My professional start in education came long after much was known about ADHD’s reality. We’ve had roughly 20 years to sort out the presence and widespread impact the disorder has on kids of school age, but we’re not in a happy place yet. Schools, parents, and doctors all clearly have a long way to go to understanding and dealing with the disorder. Schools in particular, as a whole, have not questioned age old practices nearly enough to deal with kids with ADHD. In fact, the public school system still does not formally recognize it. This brings a mixed bag of results for kids.

    For one, what label would you have for a young person with the disorder? Are they learning disabled? That’s a tough call to make in light of the fact that many of those young people actually have a higher threshold for intelligence than their peers. Is it an emotional disability? Many kids with focus disorders display compliant, quiet behavior, or have had boundaries established which prevent them from acting out or showing rampant disrespect.

    Currently, kids with ADHD are given what are called 504 plans. These acknowledge the presence of an issue that can impede learning but do not officially recognize the disorder. I’m not even sure that in light of how much is still developing in terms of understanding of ADHD that this is a bad thing. To steal a badly overused cliché, it is what it is.

    If the school system I grew up in seemed rigid at times, today’s public and private school system resemble a bar of Laffy Taffy that’s been stuck in a freezer: it’s supposed to be supple, but is dependent on climate. Knowledge of the disorder hasn’t led to universal acceptance or changes in perceived best practices. In fact, I would argue that in some districts, it’s actually worse. The school system I grew up in never had to worry about test scores. In test-score crazy school districts, administrators might as well put their souls up for sale on Craigslist. Unscrupulous and pride-lacking school administrators have prostituted themselves in the name of adding one more trick turned to their curriculum vitae. In those districts, things are actually worse.

    I think in looking back at my primary years, I was blessed to have had teachers who let me be creative, taught me to think, and allowed me to be me; with or without the ADHD. In schools that are more like test factories in today’s world, the biggest pariah in the world of the principal and teacher is an overactive boy.

    They threaten test scores.

    And that’s where knowledge of ADHD can be turned back on the kid who may or may not even be aware of the disorder they carry. There’s not a teacher or principal in this country who are not aware of it now. Everyone is, even if they lack specifics or depth in their knowledge. There’s several ways to look at a kid with ADHD in school and identify them as sharks. For me it was the smell of blood in the water; a hapless teacher, better yet a substitute teacher in the classroom was the equivalent of a bleeding swimmer in a Jaws movie.

    They were ‘bout to be eaten; violently.

    Kids with ADHD are wild cards for them, literally and figuratively. They don’t do well in school in many cases. The ones who misbehave may actually test fairly well, but may be done early and then disrupt the test environment. Those who have more passive manifestations of it may be compliant, but may be more apt to make a nice little design in the test circles and quietly fail to get it over with.

    I recall as a kid learning that if a shark is kept still, it will die. So, too, will kids with ADHD. Die might be a bit strong, but they aren’t exactly going to thrive. In my 12 years as a teacher, I have seen principals and special educators plot to break the spirit of kids who have ADHD or display scrambled tendencies. I’ve borne witness to a jackass principal and her unethical lackey of a special education director tell an entire staff of special education teachers that we needed to belittle, torment and antagonize a group of disabled students until they reacted, allowing for them to be pushed out of the school. Professional, well paid educators, told us to exploit their disability to allow for their removal from school. It wasn’t even hidden; it was the desired outcome.

    For what it’s worth, I don’t think I ever ran into that as a student, but then again, I couldn’t. Nobody knew enough about ADHD or the negative influence a stale, static class would have on someone like me or those sitting near me. As I moved along into the high school years, I would argue that it actually provided a great experience for many sitting near me as I think some of my best material came in those moments. Then again, if you were sitting in front of me and were as socially derelict as I was lacking in focus, you’d disagree with that.

    For people who have lived with a disability, be it Mr. Robles and his absent limb or an adult just learning about their own ADHD, it’s easy to lose the backstory. What that overshadows for many, is the story and the experiences that someone went through from point A to point B to point well taken. As with anyone’s tale of a disability, those who grow up with ADHD have a lot of stories behind them.

    And some of those are much more interesting than others.

    This is especially true when it comes to school.

    Chapter 1: The Squirrel Deep Inside Me

    My life as a student would have you believe that as a ninth grader, I suddenly was stricken with ADHD almost as if it were a contagious virus. Up to that point, I was a fairly model student. A more in-depth look reveals something else. While difficult to spot to the naked eye, my whiskers and bushy tail could be seen in flashes as my inner-squirrel would occasionally peek around the corner. It took time to have it unleash the scrambled fury that branded my high school experience. Like many kids, rather than act out or be non-compliant with adults, I was more introspective and aloof while giving the appearance that I was paying attention.

    I’ve learned enough about ADHD to know that no matter how it looks in dissecting my life as a student; full-blown squirrel tendencies do not appear out of nowhere. Mine have always been there, but their manifestation was vastly different at various stages of my life.

    While subtle, there were some distinct trends that started during my early years in school and served as a precursor of what was to come. Of course, I benefit from having subsequently worked for twelve years as a classroom teacher in adulthood, which helps in identifying where the boredom took over. It didn’t take long for me to develop a false sense of security while daydreaming, nor for the teacher to sound like she escaped a Peanuts cartoon.

    I went to kindergarten having taught myself to read before I turned four. I liked it when adults read children’s books to me, but I found little in them to motivate me to learn to read. I wanted something more, and I found it in newspapers. Displaying decoding skills that should have probably landed me in a CIA Preparatory Academy, the first thing I was known to have read was an article on pathological liars in a Sunday paper. It is pretty clear that my mind had somewhat of an autopilot setting that set out to problem solve all on its own, and try to decode anything placed in front of it.

    It’s a neat trait to have, but also somewhat disturbing if you consider it pretty much rendered the functionality of a teacher in my world to that of a pair of tits on a bull. To his credit, my old man was on top of this, but placed in the highly unenviable position of being at odds with the district which he worked. He was my dad, but doubled as an assistant principal at the local high school. My advanced ability to read was leading to readily apparent boredom in school. Years later, my dad would express frustration with the district, which by most counts was very progressive in their thinking but felt no need to get me on a more challenging track.

    To that end, the battle between my dad and the district remained a secret to me until I was 40. I never knew.

    That’s not to say I was beyond the ability to benefit from the poorly paid teacher standing at the front of the class. I got something out of class and enjoyed many of my teachers, especially in the early years. It’s just that before ever looking to them for help, I was going to attempt to solve whatever puzzle they put before me on my own first, and ask questions later.

    At times, that puzzle was schoolwork. It was no different, however, when the puzzle was people. My ADHD didn’t leave me looking to simply decode information. Situations, emotions and the core of a person’s psyche were all fair game to be decoded as well. This didn’t bode well for teachers of mine who had poor delivery style or classroom management skills. In fact, unlocking their emotional components would provide folly for me to celebrate and exploit.

    For me, the fuel for a raging fire of off-task behavior was my dreaded arch enemy: boredom.

    I wasn’t guaranteed to be focused simply because I did not grasp subject matter. In fact, I might very well simply tune it out if it would be presented as something too complex for me to comprehend. With that said, I learned that just because things were being taught, didn’t mean I wasn’t already adept at learning it. If that was the case, I’d better be given the material in a way that ensured that I’d pay attention to it.

    Such was the case with reading. I already knew how to read, but it did little to damage a love of learning about reading in school. My early education teachers employed a reading program called Letter People, which looked auspiciously like they were born from a bad LSD trip. The Letter People resonated with the mid-70’s era tapestry of tack and could have probably easily passed for drag queens. Nothing kept my interest for long, but they looked silly enough to bridge the gap between open misbehavior and the sexier parts of kindergarten, such as the sandbox. Our sandbox was inside and I wanted to be there, all the time. When I couldn’t, I resorted to a form of buggery.

    I distinctly recall stealing the small plastic bears we used for counting, knowing it was wrong, and doing it anyway. Clearly I was destined to be a thug; but then again, who could resist such a tempting lot? The primary colored plastic bears were to us what cigarettes were to prisoners or currency was to the rest of society. It was my first display of in-class chicanery, and hardly the last. For that, I blame the open concept school I was in at the time. Open concept schools are eclipsed only by Pete’s Dragon as the worst idea of the 1970’s. Clearly, it was to blame for my early thievery.

    No walls? Were school boards always so inept? It makes you wonder if they were tripping on the same mind-altering hallucinogens that gave birth to The Letter People.

    It makes you wonder if the decision makers of the day also suffered from the perils of ADHD. Even Hollywood understood the comedic value of the absence of walls. Had you turned on a TV anytime between 1978 and 1982, you’d have undoubtedly heard Les Nessman long for an office with real walls, in lieu of lines of masking tape he used for privacy.

    That reference may escape some of you. If you’re my age, it won’t.

    My open concept school provided the attention surfing distraction that television could not. Kids today don’t understand how limited our entertainment choices were for easily distracted kids in my generation. I had to go to school to have my attention wander. Let’s face it, four or so channels isn’t going to take you too far into the world of make believe that kids today can drift off to. We didn’t have a choice but to watch bad television. We had the three network channels and if you were lucky, one or two on UHF if you could indeed get that, which was questionable. I choose not to count PBS, which was also readily available, but not a real station. PBS is evil. I know it, you know it, and they know it.

    I spent my first three and a half years of my education at Evergreen Elementary, where I took my bowl shaped mop of a head to school for the first time on September 6th, 1977. It would be the longest stint I’d ever spend at one single school.

    When I think back on it, I don’t remember being bored for long, but I do remember a lot. After The Letter People though, not much of what I recall was academic in nature. Most of what I remember about school came outside the classroom. I have distinct memories of lunch, times between classes, on the bus, field trips, birthday parties, play dates, our yearly track meet, and anything else you can think of that happened outside of the three R’s.

    Is it normal to recall nothing of the actual reason we are led to believe that kids are required to attend school in this country? Probably not as abnormal as you’d think, but to have little to no memory after the drugged out drawings that made up The Letter People sets off a warning siren for me just a little bit.

    I think in my case, there’s a thin line between memories and hyper-focus. It didn’t take long to see the impact of hyper-focus on my schooling. This went beyond just the reading. Even at an early age, I displayed some traits that were interesting to say the least. By the time I was at the end of first grade, I had taken an intense interest in American Presidents, strong enough to allow me to memorize them all, in order. When I say all of them, I mean all of them, including Chester A. Arthur, Millard Fillmore and the full litany of non-descript American figure heads our history books and classes have long since ignored.

    As you can imagine, the ability to recite presidents to your classmates might seem like a status building ability, but you know, not so much. In the Spartan world of elementary school children, it serves as nothing more than a bull’s eye on your ass. Respect amongst my peers was already proving to be a fleeting entity. I recall distinctly being on the bus, and being told by an older kid to get out of the seat I was in. During that process, I was called a little shit by the ejector of my seat. I learned that tattling on others in school was a useless venture. Upon sharing the trauma with my mother, she responded by telling me that I wasn’t a little shit, I was a big shit.

    She was premature in that assessment but she was on to something. As it would turn out, I’d be a much bigger shit than my tiny frame would indicate I’d be.

    Peer pleasantries were not enhanced by my mom’s use of my school supplies to cut my hair. As was lamented in Volume 1, my mom believed that anyone could grab a pair of safety scissors and some scotch tape and issue a haircut. My siblings and I arrived to school on many occasions resembling beauty school test dummies, which did not escape some of the budding Neanderthals I attended school with. Apparently, their moms paid for haircuts. In-school mockery followed all standard issue home haircuts, which was a form of salt on a painful wound. To a kid that age, little can be more disconcerting following an act of follicular homicide than being asked if you had had been in a fight with a lawnmower, and if the lawnmower won.

    Touché. Well played, my friend.

    It didn’t take much to intimidate me in elementary school, either. I remember trembling with fear on the playground while a female classmate made all of us her bitch. It was bad enough she looked awkwardly like one of the boys. In fact, she bore enough resemblance to one of my good friends at school that it elicited mocking speculation over my friend’s lineal ties to her. She owned that playground. She told all of us what we’d play, how we’d play it, and how long she’d allow us to play. Her methodology and delivery were delivered in a manner that foreshadowed an adult future as a leather wearing dominatrix. I’m sure she’s found balance and made some self-loathing young man with gender questions and low self-esteem very happy; or very scared. It’s one of the two for sure. The more I think of it, the more I lean towards the latter.

    While I didn’t run for my life on a daily basis once I got to school, I was well aware of where I stood when it came to elementary school culture. Where I stood was short. Estimating such matters of height is easy when you’re timid and undersized. I don’t think I had any bully tendencies in me but even if I had, wielding the same attitude that the she-bully did on our playground at recess would have been logistically difficult. I wasn’t just the smallest kid in my class; I was pretty much the smallest kid in a solid 100 mile radius, maybe further. Even if I had wanted to, there weren’t a lot of kids around for me to impose my will on. An imposition of will is hard to do while your recess is subject to a dom-sub relationship at the hands of a gender-bending vixen.

    Her porcupine nature made her a formidable foe, but she would prove to have some mortal vulnerabilities. My neighbor Scott was in class with me, and had demonstrated a penchant for verbal rebellion and passive-aggressive vengeance that was pretty influential on playgrounds and in class. If Scott disliked something, he would let you know. The harlot we dealt with posed a variety of dangers, however, and his nuclear smartass powers were limited by her quills of unpleasant behavior. She was quick to induce issues and even quicker to tattle. She’d also resort to physical violence; something that Scott and I were hard pressed to willingly engage in.

    To stave her off, we’d have to covertly plot out a path towards revenge. School would come to provide a long list of antagonists for me over the years, and eventually thrust me into that role as well as that of a protagonist of sorts. This would prove to be my first battle on the school grounds, and I was determined to come out

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