My Response to Being Slightly Bullied

I don’t remember a time after 8th grade until recently when I showed my true self to the world, and that was decades ago.

Eighth grade is when it all got too big for me, and I needed to make a move or crumble beneath the weight of negative expectation.

I had always been a teacher. Some people are just born that way—teachers and leaders—and both would describe who I thought myself to be. If I sensed another person was struggling to understand a concept or fact, I often went out of my way to make it easier for them. It’s just what I was born to do, the same way I was born to write and to paint. It’s part of my fabric to help others succeed.

I never imagined I’d be a threat to anyone else or that being “smart” would become a negative label I’d wear emblazoned across my forehead. Plenty of other people I knew carried different names, like pretty, funny, athletic, and gifted, so “smart” was just another title which should’ve fit neatly on the spectrum without much ado.

But it didn’t.

Not for me, anyway.

Other kids began to point it out and make fun of me because the teachers would call on me for answers more often, would pull me out of class to run errands, and would ask me to tutor other students who needed extra help. As far back as I can remember, someone was calling me “teacher’s pet,” and this was not a compliment.

I also graded other kids’ papers with the traditional red marker. Looking back, I can see why another student marking red X’s on an assignment would be an offensive thing, but as I was living it, I didn’t understand.

I wasn’t being malicious. I was being a teacher. I took the job very seriously.

It all seems quite ridiculous now (especially when you consider all the years I’ve acted and spoken at a level way beneath my ability). I let the world, or at least my small part of it, convince me that it was correct about the role I’d play in life, and that I was wrong to expect otherwise.

Knowledge is dangerous and must be hidden.

No one desires friendship with someone who grades their papers! Okay, I get it.

Speaking with correct grammar and syntax is unacceptable in our culture. Survival mode means that I must “dumb myself down.”

I had to release my power, give it up, because it was a threat to others—not just my classmates but adults who didn’t want me to set the curve for their sweet babies.

I became barely recognizable to myself in high school. I rarely did my own homework, although I often completed other people’s. I did just enough of everything to get by. I let the current cultural norm decide my patterns of speech. I rarely offered perspectives or opinions in class—afraid to even raise my hand and acknowledge my presence.

Instead of excelling, I scraped by. I embraced an attitude of mediocrity because with it came acceptance.

After high school, I entered the working world. Although by default I usually ended up in a management role, I never did as much as I could do. I didn’t strive for excellence or perform to the level of my capabilities. I knew immediately that people were threatened by me, although I couldn’t ever quite determine why that was.

Then, after 11 years out of school, I went to college. It was an entirely different experience, as there I pushed myself to make perfect grades while maintaining a full-time job and tending to my family.

Absolutely no one was threatened by me in college. In fact, I had a great deal of catching up to do. These people really were intelligent—scarily so—and I wasn’t ready for them!

I thrived in the college environment. I learned and grew and began to finally shake off some of the bondage from the past.

However, I bounced back and forth most of my life between showing my intelligence and acting really stupid. To be honest, some of it wasn’t an act. After a lifetime of wearing a dunce cap, it starts fitting pretty well.

My natural inclination has become to hide my intellect, and it makes me super angry with myself when I do it. I also almost can’t help it because I’ve done it for so long that I forget I’m not that person I created as a front for myself.

It could be confusing or even psychologically misunderstood if someone were to ask me about it, so I’m thinking I’ll do what I always do with topics hard to navigate and channel it into a flow to write about, which is something I started right this minute for this subject.

What I’ve learned in all my years of adulthood is that we’re cheating our children, both sons and daughters, out of the lives they’re meant to have if we allow them to let the world around them decide who they should be based on its own comfort level.  

I let fear dictate my choices. I wanted to fit in, so I became invisible. I’m still dealing with the fallout. Only as I look in the rearview am I beginning to use language distinguishing me from mediocrity. And not always. I’m adaptable.

I can drop the smart act in an instant!

It’s not pretentious language by any means, just the words I hear before I substitute them for a lesser version.

The silver lining to this heavy cloud is that I’m able to use my lesser version in my writing. I’m comfortable with it now. It’s like an old friend, wrapping around me as a protection from external forces but also as a way to keep comfortably warm and peaceful as the stories flow from my mind onto the page in the language fashioned by years of “fitting in” and suddenly causing me to stand out instead.

Isn’t it funny how things work?

You can order a copy of my book here:

It’s written from my 11 year old point of view, but the language I have collected from a lifetime of living in the Deep South paints the picture better than I could have if I’d spoken with perfect grammar.

Ain’t that somethin’?