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Author Topic: I was homeschooled...  (Read 7874 times)

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Guild

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I was homeschooled...
« on: May 01, 2009, 01:21:23 PM »

From kindergarten to fourth-grade I was homeschooled in the room above my dad's garage by my mom. When my dad passed away my mom couldn't stay home and teach me anymore, so she shipped me off to public school.

The kids there were so fucking behind me academically and so far ahead of me socially that I nearly killed myself out of a sense of not belonging. I didn't know how to talk to other kids and I was immediately chastized for always knowing the answers. I became labeled as a nerd and girls wouldn't even approach me or carry on a serious conversation with me no matter how I tried.

I decided that other people my age were jerks and only grownups were worth talking to.

I think it's given me a bit of a superiority complex and I'm still working that one out, but one thing I learned to do as a survival tactic was to play very dumb and even be disruptive for attention. The teachers loved me because they all thought I was a genius, and some people liked me because I didn't seem to give a fuck.

Soon I was trolling regularly. I'd do really weird stuff like paint my face or wear a fake moustache to class. I told outrageous lies about family members or what happened at my house.

The few friends I did have were embarassed of my nonchalance about being a nerd: I specifically remember Rosencrantz being embarassed that I played gameboy in public during our Freshman year. :D

I didn't understand the notion of other people being annoyed or even angered by seeing someone who didn't buy into their view of how people should act. One day while walking home a bully named Kyle pulled his car over, got out and started threatening me with a big, metal baseball-bat, saying I'd been, "A little bitch" all year. I couldn't think of a response because it was so illogical to say, so I kept walking. That night I felt so angry. I went to school the next day and told the Principal to do something about the bullying. He jumped to, because technically if Kyle had beaten me up, the school would have been responsible, since neither of us had yet been home.

The Principal sat Kyle and I down in the same room and I explained to Kyle how I'd felt when he'd threatened me. To my amazement, Kyle started crying. That was the moment when I think my brain kinda cracked.

How could this tough, giant bully be crying in front of me? The only logical answer: Everyone, especially bullies, feels like I do sometimes. Everyone likes to feel like they belong, and nobody likes to be ignored or bullied. It was considerably more impactful then when the concept was new: Bullies are bullies because they're afraid.

I wish now that I'd either been thrust directly into public school or continued my private education. Either scenario would probably have saved me quite a bit of grief. I'll say this, though: My utter and seemingly pathological lack of respect for rules has been equal parts rewarding and detrimental. At least when I'm gone they'll say, "Well, that guy didn't care WHAT people thought of him."

That's my dream, and I owe it all to homeschooling.
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Rosencrantz

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Re: I was homeschooled...
« Reply #1 on: May 01, 2009, 01:27:56 PM »

I specifically remember Rosencrantz being embarassed that I played gameboy in public during our Freshman year. :D

I don't remember that at all, but then that was an awful year for me as well because I spent most of my lunches being harassed by people who had been mostly friendly to me ever since fifth grade. (One of them inexplicably emailed just a couple years ago, apologizing for his behavior. He had joined the Air Force as well and found my work email through the AF-wide address book.)
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Brentai

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Re: I was homeschooled...
« Reply #2 on: May 01, 2009, 01:37:49 PM »

I was never homeschooled, but I did have this thing where I ended up in a completely different school every two years, without fail, even though my family hardly moved at all.  It was a bit like being a military brat only without the fringe benefits of actually being a military brat.  By sixth or seventh grade I had just stopped bothering to make new friends.

Also, I got dragged along behind my actual intellectual peers because my parents refused to let me skip grades, fearing it'd fuck up my social development.  Then they fucked up my social development in the way described above.  Woo and fucking hoo.
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Friday

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Re: I was homeschooled...
« Reply #3 on: May 01, 2009, 02:02:03 PM »

Quote
"Well, that guy didn't care WHAT people thought of him."

You care what people think of you, Guild. Maybe not in exactly the usual way, but you do. You got upset when you were banned, remember? Depressed, even.

Really, more than anything else, that proved to me you were a human being and I started to like you more because of it.

And for the record, I have never asked to have you banned. I just wanted you to leave me alone (which you have been).

Anyway, a person who really doesn't care what people think about him, at all, is probably a person you don't want to know, because he/she will do whatever they want, all the time, without regard for the consequences. Honestly, I kind of used to think you were that way.

Now that I know you're just a big marshmallow underneath that hairy, regenerating exterior, I don't hate you anymore. I admit I used to despise you pretty hard, yeah.
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Friday

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Re: I was homeschooled...
« Reply #4 on: May 01, 2009, 02:03:30 PM »

Besides, now I hate Geo, that dirty backstabbing Canadian.
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Mothra

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Re: I was homeschooled...
« Reply #5 on: May 01, 2009, 02:04:40 PM »

re: Social Development: It's all pretty much just learning to do what's expected or most acceptable, regurgitating actions and lines without thinking for yourself. You probably got this from the bully's breakdown, but I mean, realize that all the coolest people in school just knew which personality got the best reception, and tried to act it.

The sooner you skip over all the song and dance of trying to be accepted, and just be A Good Dude Doing What He Wants To Do, you'll be way ahead of the game.

People no more know what they're doing than you do, they're just better at hiding it.
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Guild

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Re: I was homeschooled...
« Reply #6 on: May 01, 2009, 02:18:39 PM »

That TOTALLY rocks, Friday. I never disliked you, but I found you to be a very annoying puzzle in the way you always seemed to be mad at me! Clashing of personalities FTW.
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Bongo Bill

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Re: I was homeschooled...
« Reply #7 on: May 01, 2009, 02:21:04 PM »

From junior high school onward, I was two years younger than the rest of my grade. I don't know what I did differently, though, because I never had any difficulty getting people to like me. (I do have a suspicion that I went to Bizarro High School, though.)

Elementary school - or the half of it that I actually attended - saw me in a fairly sizable gifted program with all the other weird smart kids, where we were very adeptly protected from learning firsthand that the other kids our age simply could not keep up with us, mentally. I believe that the ultimate goal of this program was to deposit us in the front half of the various AP and Honors programs once high school happened, but I left early, moving to a school district where such strategies were not employed. Turned out all right, though.

basically what I am saying is I have no idea how I wound up with you losers
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...but is it art?

Friday

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Re: I was homeschooled...
« Reply #8 on: May 01, 2009, 02:30:35 PM »

Everyone here who was in GATE, raise your hand

Garbage and Trash Education, is what the other kids called us, iirc
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Rosencrantz

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Re: I was homeschooled...
« Reply #9 on: May 01, 2009, 02:39:57 PM »

Everyone here who was in GATE, raise your hand

Garbage and Trash Education, is what the other kids called us, iirc
* Rosencrantz raises his hand

I don't remember it being worthwhile at all, but maybe that's because the two parts I remember most are:

In fifth grade, we spent a semester studying about candy in other countries. Actually, the studying was mostly done by us on our free time for our project. I have the comic I drew about mutant animals and candy in Norway scanned on my computer still.

In eighth grade, we studied Shakespeare. This means that we performed a scene from Hamlet and went to Ashland, Oregon for the Shakespeare festival. (That was actually cool, though.) In the scene we performed, my friend Justin and I were... the guards, whose only line was something like "Hear, hear!" or whatever. So a semester of GATE was wasted as I attended each class only to watch other people practice their parts.
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Kazz

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Re: I was homeschooled...
« Reply #10 on: May 01, 2009, 02:43:45 PM »

The sooner you skip over all the song and dance of trying to be accepted, and just be A Good Dude Doing What He Wants To Do, you'll be way ahead of the game.

qft.

I was an awful little kid who was terribly upset because nobody liked him, and once I finally stopped worrying about it and trying to force myself to act cooler, people accepted me.

(Then I came to the internet and learned to fake it all over again.)
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Guild

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Re: I was homeschooled...
« Reply #11 on: May 01, 2009, 02:53:40 PM »

re: Social Development: It's all pretty much just learning to do what's expected or most acceptable, regurgitating actions and lines without thinking for yourself. You probably got this from the bully's breakdown, but I mean, realize that all the coolest people in school just knew which personality got the best reception, and tried to act it.

The sooner you skip over all the song and dance of trying to be accepted, and just be A Good Dude Doing What He Wants To Do, you'll be way ahead of the game.

People no more know what they're doing than you do, they're just better at hiding it.

I guess I knew everyone was faking it and that pissed me off, because I didn't see the need, though now that I'm older I know it really is a necessity to be "fake" in the sense of not saying YES when a girl asks AM I FAT?

Then again, that kind of thinking leads to metacognitive social engineering. The morality aside, it's a downright time-consuming and scares people.

I guess the happy medium is be polite/fake/social but don't have an agenda. Edit: And I'm demonstrably incapable of not pushing my agenda, so I guess I'll just keep going and see where I crash.
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Friday

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Re: I was homeschooled...
« Reply #12 on: May 01, 2009, 02:55:19 PM »

Quote
In eighth grade, we studied Shakespeare. This means that we performed a scene from Hamlet and went to Ashland, Oregon for the Shakespeare festival.

God. I've been to Ashland to see plays on field trips so many times. The only one I really remember well was King Lear. They did a good job with the swordfight between the brothers at the end.

Not that, uh. I'm complaining. That place rocks.

Did you ever run in the giant hamster wheel they have in the park?

I remember as kids the whole class would fight over whose turn it was. No, I have no idea why we wanted to be rodents. I got into a fistfight when I was like 11 with this fat kid named Jeff because he stole my turn.

EDIT: Oh, and my mom was obsessed with "girl trips" where she would steal me away from my brother and father and take me to Ashland at least once a year, sometimes twice. We would see plays. I probably would have enjoyed it more if A: I wasn't a kid and plays were boring and B: my mom wasn't a fucking control freak that causes little tumors to appear in the brains of her children from prolonged exposure

All in all I've been to Ashland about a billion times more than San Fran, despite San Fran being closer, which is fine by me as I hate cities, even gay cities filled with love and flowers
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jsnlxndrlv

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Re: I was homeschooled...
« Reply #13 on: May 01, 2009, 03:01:06 PM »

They called it GTC at my school.  It was fun enough, but I kind of wondered how educational it was, at the time.  Not that I minded getting pulled out of P.E. or English to play Zork or build a gravity-powered car that can go up ramps.  Certainly more enriching than my regular classes, and it's probably the only I don't look back on middle school with righteous fury.
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Friday

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Re: I was homeschooled...
« Reply #14 on: May 01, 2009, 03:03:08 PM »

I didn't mind GATE so much as I minded the horrendous fucking arrogance of myself and all the other kids because it meant we were better than everyone else

It helped that our parents and teachers relentlessly reinforced this idea by continually telling us the other kids were mean because "they were jealous"
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Kazz

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Re: I was homeschooled...
« Reply #15 on: May 01, 2009, 03:04:23 PM »

I responded to all the "you're clearly a genius" talk in K through 6 by failing at least one class a year from then until now.
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Friday

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Re: I was homeschooled...
« Reply #16 on: May 01, 2009, 03:06:42 PM »

yeah me too

I even dropped out of high school to prove them wrong

turns out I'm stupid after all, take that, you arrogant jerks
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Guild

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Re: I was homeschooled...
« Reply #17 on: May 01, 2009, 03:08:04 PM »

 :sadpanda:

i feel your pain(s)
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Kazz

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Re: I was homeschooled...
« Reply #18 on: May 01, 2009, 03:10:10 PM »

hi fives all around
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James Edward Smith

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Re: I was homeschooled...
« Reply #19 on: May 01, 2009, 03:42:08 PM »

I was in the Canadian equivalent to GATE until I got in a fight with a kid who took Muay Thai in grade 5 and he kicked me into a wall after which I blacked out for about 5-10 minutes. I haven't been as smart since.  :hurr:
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Talk? Talk is for lovers, Merlin. I need a sword to be king.
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