Tragedy Leading to Triumph. April 13, 2023

 I have written the last few days about the worst experiences I had in Middle School and will now talk more about the good things it helped me accomplish. I wrote about how in eighth grade, I had a resource teacher that spent at least half the class time ranting about what he thought was wrong with the current youth than actually teaching. Every time the most minor of rules was broken, he would belittle students. The worst blow he gave me, was one day, in one of my only regular classes, I told a joke I didn't get in trouble for telling two years earlier. He then belittled me saying people in the hall did not respond when I greeted them, and blamed it on the joke, not letting me explain I didn't get in trouble for it previously. After the first time that year, when I was kicked out of my first homeroom, he warned me, in unfriendly voice, that if I didn't convert, I would be put in the behavior modification class. I was furious because nobody would tell people to stop bullying me, unless I responded to it. I modeled a secondary villain in The Penitent Warrior, on that man, and though I didn't see him since I left middle school, the things he said haunted me until my senior year in high school. Every time, I greeted my friends, and they didn't respond, I remembered what he said, until I finally confessed it to them after almost making a scene. 

Though I had a fair share of friends that were boys, it was always easier for me to make friends with girls. Another carryover from middle school to my senior was being picked on about having a crush on my best friend. When I first started high school, I saw that I would have to spend most of the day in a class that looked more like a daycare than high school and dreaded getting picked on even more. My dad told me if I wanted to prove myself, I had to leave her alone and act like she didn't exist, but it was her friendship that gave me advice about how to be more like a normal person. She also thought a lot of the weird things I did made me cool and unique. When I reflect on the memories of my parents arguing about what I meant when I said I wanted to see her outside school, I now see that if it were on a TV sitcom, it would probably be funny. I really just wanted to see check on her to see how she was doing, and my parents, especially my mom, could not see past my crush on her, and acted like it was better the less often I saw her. She never said, I couldn't see her out of school, but she wasn't clear if I could. It took until about ten or fifteen years ago, for my mom to really understand what I was talking about. The best friend I had a crush on was the first person I friended on Facebook, and while social media has had a somewhat negative reputation lately, I can now do the very thing my mom and I were arguing about, and that is see how she is doing without having to call her or go look for her. And like I said, if she gets married a third time, she will have my blessing. 

In my Thursday night Bible study group, they always talk about the very things that happened to me in school that inspired my literary work. Hearing them talk about how bad it is getting, makes me fear people would suffer the same humiliation and trauma I did. Even adults make mistakes, but they can figure out the right way to stop this, if we just help them see. And as for those who are going through the troubled times, like the ones I went through, it will not be forever. They can move on to regular classes and breakaway from the comprehensive development classes. If they have a crush on their best friend and if it doesn't work out the way they think it will, they can still have a friend for life. Most of all, if they aspire to write books, it will give them material to write about. They can go insane and go on a shooting spree, or they can use that for artistic purposes that will help prevent these things, it's their choice alone. If you want to learn more about how those things, the good and bad, gave me ideas, you can read my book. Smashwords.com