----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- altered life trajectory This is some self-absorbed shit, but recently I've been thinking about how my mom could have inadvertently ruined my life. She was crazy aggressive when it came to my education. I remember in Kindergarten she demanded a meeting with the teacher to complain that we were not given actual grades. (A, B, C, D, F.) My mom thought we needed to have this "encouragement" to do well and prepare us for college. Now, my Kindergarten teacher was an evil lady that used to drag people to the principal's office by their ear. She never did that to me, but I do remember she did make me cry a few times over other things and then yelled at me for crying. She was verbally and emotionally abusive as well as a fan of physical punishment. But at this particular meeting, I remember she looked over at me and gave me this look, as if she felt sorry for me for all the undue stress I was going to have to deal with in my life about school. This psycho bitch of a woman felt bad for me. That's not how my mom made her biggest mistake, though. She put me in the wrong class. I was supposed to start school when I was 6 years old. But she thought that was too late for me to start and she made me start school right after I turned 5 years old. She went to the school and demanded they put me in a year early. I remember my mom telling me how I was "too smart" to wait to go to school. Of course my memories of that long ago are a little hazy, but I totally remember this big fit my mom threw in order to get me started on school. And I never really thought much about it until recently. Living in the house I grew up in has made me think (too much) about my past experiences. But, I could have had an entirely different set of friends, different teachers, a whole different experience. I had some really horrible things happen to me in school. I know it was the 80s and teachers and kids could get away with a lot more back then, but still, it seems it shouldn't have been so traumatic. My father in law used to tell me stories of what school was like for him the 1950s and it always reminded me of some of the shit I had to go through. There's nothing to be done about any of it. People always say "things happen for a reason". The reason was my mom fucked up. There's no point in being angry with the dead, but I had to take a moment to acknowledge the emotion before I could move on. Maybe putting me in the wrong class is part of why I never have felt like I really belong anywhere. I hope in a parallel universe, I had a happy childhood. 3:42 PM - Friday, Aug. 09, 2024 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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