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[brains.memory.school]
No, not the memory post I referenced intending to make yesterday.
Different one.
Reading the replies to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
theferrett's query about women's worst peer-inflicted humiliation in middle school (possibly triggering!) did an interesting job of reminding me of just how crappy my memory is, especially relating to things that I don't think I can do anything about. I have startlingly good ignoring abilities, I notice.
My initial reaction was that middle school (for non-USians, middle school is... 1-8th, I think, with 6-8 also being known as junior high, and 9-12 being high school. I think that what is defined as the pre-high school years varies by school) and junior high weren't bad. Thing is, though, that I _started_ school in middle school (4th and 5th were part-time), and as I will eventually get around to explaining, starting school is what triggered me to realize that I needed to work on actually having a useful memory that I can access voluntarily (rather than having things remind me of stuff). So I have no idea how middle school was, partly because I had no sense of what was and was not normal for that particular context at the time. My main memories of school (up until mid-way through high school) was terror, but I don't know what that emotion is based on.
Junior high, however, I _do_ have things I remember, after reading lots of the comments (nothing around junior high came to mind without a lot of reading, mind). I remember having a particular guy in the class who I actually hated, intensely. Now, keep in mind that it's _damned_ difficult to get me to hate people. I can't think of anyone else that I've ever hated. I don't have any idea what he _did_, although I suspect that it ties into the fact that I'm one of 6 kids so my parents were not precisely well-to-do, I had _no_ clothing sense and couldn't purchase my own clothing anyway, I had no social skills whatsoever (at least as far as the context of school is concerned), and nothing anyone did was making any sense to me. I remember that my class was apparently nasty enough to cause a teacher to quit partway through the year (to be replaced by someone who didn't take shit from anyone, and who was a teacher I really liked. Also the teacher who beat 'there is no such word as irregardless' into our heads. :). I remember being invited to (and going to) parties, although I'm still not sure in retrospect if that was intended as an honest invitation or as a method with which to get info to pick on me with. I remember feeling very confused by and left out of parties (I also suspect the invites were because their parents told them to, as well as because there were only 4 girls in my class). I suspect strongly that my severe obliviousness saved me from being affected by a lot of the crap that was going on, since one had even more than is true now to _not_ be subtle for me to get things (which is probably why it was a guy I hated, and not a girl - girls tend to be more subtle).
High school, first year, was evil because the people I carpooled with were also the people who were my roommates, and who were popular type girls. (the high school I went to was a boarding and day school with rooms even for day students) Got a _lot_ of shit about supposedly smelling bad, never brushing my teeth, having stupid clothing (true, but still!), etc. This is also the year that there was a note left on my door theoretically from one of the sweet guys in the school asking me out. I'm _still_ not sure if that was actually serious or not, since it was mostly through notes on my door that the smelling bad type comments were coming (probably because written stuff I was far more likely to actually process). I'm glad that we had mandatory sports, because it was soccer through which I made the couple of upperclassmen as friends (who more or less adopted me), to whose room I tended to escape to get away from my evil roommates. (I did a lot of getting adopted through school, I note. Probably because I needed it, being terribly oblivious and poor at figuring things out, and probably because I always had such... earnestness going for me. Teachers tended to adopt me far more often than kids did, but both did) I think it's the combination of the fact that I could escape (and was able to be roommates with the one who didn't graduate the following year) and the fact that having friends was so helpful that I managed to mostly not _care_ what people not my friends were saying (and thankfully, the friends I made really _were_ friends, and weren't people just trying to get things they could spread around the school about me - I oddly seemed to have managed to avoid all the people who weren't really my friends, throughout school. I don't know how...), that the overt torment stopped after that first year (not sure if the subtle stuff did, since I didn't pick up on it. I have trouble believing that there was nothing subtle going on, though).
I babble. But I find it interesting that it was the high school stuff I remember, even though junior high was apparently bad enough that I actively hated someone. But then, as I will eventually get around to saying, my memory was slowly improving as I actively worked on it, and I only realized I needed to when I got to school in 4th grade. *shakes head* Weirdness.
Different one.
Reading the replies to
theferrett's query about women's worst peer-inflicted humiliation in middle school (possibly triggering!) did an interesting job of reminding me of just how crappy my memory is, especially relating to things that I don't think I can do anything about. I have startlingly good ignoring abilities, I notice.My initial reaction was that middle school (for non-USians, middle school is... 1-8th, I think, with 6-8 also being known as junior high, and 9-12 being high school. I think that what is defined as the pre-high school years varies by school) and junior high weren't bad. Thing is, though, that I _started_ school in middle school (4th and 5th were part-time), and as I will eventually get around to explaining, starting school is what triggered me to realize that I needed to work on actually having a useful memory that I can access voluntarily (rather than having things remind me of stuff). So I have no idea how middle school was, partly because I had no sense of what was and was not normal for that particular context at the time. My main memories of school (up until mid-way through high school) was terror, but I don't know what that emotion is based on.
Junior high, however, I _do_ have things I remember, after reading lots of the comments (nothing around junior high came to mind without a lot of reading, mind). I remember having a particular guy in the class who I actually hated, intensely. Now, keep in mind that it's _damned_ difficult to get me to hate people. I can't think of anyone else that I've ever hated. I don't have any idea what he _did_, although I suspect that it ties into the fact that I'm one of 6 kids so my parents were not precisely well-to-do, I had _no_ clothing sense and couldn't purchase my own clothing anyway, I had no social skills whatsoever (at least as far as the context of school is concerned), and nothing anyone did was making any sense to me. I remember that my class was apparently nasty enough to cause a teacher to quit partway through the year (to be replaced by someone who didn't take shit from anyone, and who was a teacher I really liked. Also the teacher who beat 'there is no such word as irregardless' into our heads. :). I remember being invited to (and going to) parties, although I'm still not sure in retrospect if that was intended as an honest invitation or as a method with which to get info to pick on me with. I remember feeling very confused by and left out of parties (I also suspect the invites were because their parents told them to, as well as because there were only 4 girls in my class). I suspect strongly that my severe obliviousness saved me from being affected by a lot of the crap that was going on, since one had even more than is true now to _not_ be subtle for me to get things (which is probably why it was a guy I hated, and not a girl - girls tend to be more subtle).
High school, first year, was evil because the people I carpooled with were also the people who were my roommates, and who were popular type girls. (the high school I went to was a boarding and day school with rooms even for day students) Got a _lot_ of shit about supposedly smelling bad, never brushing my teeth, having stupid clothing (true, but still!), etc. This is also the year that there was a note left on my door theoretically from one of the sweet guys in the school asking me out. I'm _still_ not sure if that was actually serious or not, since it was mostly through notes on my door that the smelling bad type comments were coming (probably because written stuff I was far more likely to actually process). I'm glad that we had mandatory sports, because it was soccer through which I made the couple of upperclassmen as friends (who more or less adopted me), to whose room I tended to escape to get away from my evil roommates. (I did a lot of getting adopted through school, I note. Probably because I needed it, being terribly oblivious and poor at figuring things out, and probably because I always had such... earnestness going for me. Teachers tended to adopt me far more often than kids did, but both did) I think it's the combination of the fact that I could escape (and was able to be roommates with the one who didn't graduate the following year) and the fact that having friends was so helpful that I managed to mostly not _care_ what people not my friends were saying (and thankfully, the friends I made really _were_ friends, and weren't people just trying to get things they could spread around the school about me - I oddly seemed to have managed to avoid all the people who weren't really my friends, throughout school. I don't know how...), that the overt torment stopped after that first year (not sure if the subtle stuff did, since I didn't pick up on it. I have trouble believing that there was nothing subtle going on, though).
I babble. But I find it interesting that it was the high school stuff I remember, even though junior high was apparently bad enough that I actively hated someone. But then, as I will eventually get around to saying, my memory was slowly improving as I actively worked on it, and I only realized I needed to when I got to school in 4th grade. *shakes head* Weirdness.