My Super-Charged Life

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It is amazing that a series of negative events that happened so long ago can still have such an impact on our lives.  When I was in middle school, I had a series of what I would call incidents happen to me that I believe still have a profound impact on my level of confidence to this day.  I think that as a result, I developed certain habits of behavior that aren’t always productive.  Are things that happened to you in grade school still holding you back?  It is an interesting question to ponder.

A part of living life to the fullest is honest and open self-evaluation.  It is about exploring areas of our lives where we can improve.  I want to continually reflect and learn about myself so I can strive for excellence.  Today, I thought I’d share some of my story and tomorrow I am going to continue with how I was able to deal with these issues and move on.

How an achievement test started it all.

The best that I can remember, it started with a math achievement test.  I had always done pretty well in school.  However, I vividly recall this one achievement test and what happened.  Each student was required to complete a multiple choice math test using one of those sheets with all the circles.  It was the kind you had to complete with only a #2 pencil and every circle had to be filled in completely for the computer to read it properly.  These math tests were timed and strictly proctored.  Somewhere in the middle of the test, I accidentally skipped a line of circles so all my answers were off by one line.  I tried to fix it, but I ran out of time.  Unfortunately, I didn’t understand the importance of the test at the time, so I didn’t tell anyone. 

A few weeks later the results came back and obviously I didn’t do well at all.  What I then learned was that these tests were being used to divide us up into different classes.  There were three classes.  The kids that scored the highest were in the “smart” class so they could continue to be challenged.  The kids that scored in the average range were in another class and those of us that scored below average were in what everyone recognized as the “dumb” class.  I was devastated.  I just knew I should have been in the “smart” class.  It was where all my friends were at.  It was where I belonged.  However, despite my history of good grades in math, no one questioned the achievement test and I was left in the slow learners class.  It was a blow to my ego and in my mind a travesty of justice.  I was dazed and confused and I think a little in shock that adults would let this happen to me.

The summer that shook my world.

Summer started and I soon found out that my parents were a little preoccupied at the time  of my achievement test which is probably why they didn’t step in.  One bright, sunny afternoon while playing some basketball with me, my dad announces that my mom is moving out and taking my brother and I with her.  I felt like the rug was jerked out from underneath me.  My world was starting to spin out of control.  It seems like it was only a few days later that our stuff was loaded up and moved into an apartment.  I was so emotionally upset by my parents’ divorce that I literally felt sick for months. 

When the new school year started, I remember calling my mom often to come pick me up because I had a stomachache.  I did this over and over.  She took me to the doctor, but of course, they couldn’t find anything physically wrong with me.  I now know that it was the emotional stress that was making me feel sick.  However, no one else seemed to get it.  Eventually, my mom began refusing to come get me.  She had to work and there wasn’t anything that the doctors could find that was wrong with me.  It was a tough time.

The coach that didn’t care.

This new school year brought another challenge to my shaky little life.  I encountered my first male teacher that was also a coach.  My confidence and ego were already badly bruised, but this guy didn’t know or care.  He taught science and he liked to intimidate.  I was obviously very distracted and vulnerable.  My grades were slipping.  I started struggling in his class.  His method of motivation was to try to bully his students into doing better.  He jumped on me and proceeded to try to use his middle school coaching skills to get me moving.  Given where I was at emotionally, this did not bode well for me.  It felt like he was a drill sergeant that was sent in to break me.  He was just about the final straw.  The additional pressure that he added to my life almost made me give up altogether.

How all this affected me.

It seems we are so vulnerable as children to these incidents.  Our minds are so open and primed for influence.  I know my experiences were mild compared to what many go through with physical, sexual, and emotional abuse.  I don’t know how they endure it.  Nevertheless, my experiences are no less valid.  They influenced my way of thinking and seeing myself.  In addition, I think these events took place at a very critical stage in my life.  I was a preteen boy that was just starting to try to figure out who he was in the world.  Unfortunately, the answers that were handed to me weren’t pretty.

These incidents told me that unjust things can happen that are out of my control to fix.  As a result, I started expecting bad things to occur to me.  I also felt powerless.  This is what I hated the most.  I wanted to fix it, but I couldn’t, so instead I tried to just roll over and take the beating that life offered.  I felt sorry for myself.  I adopted a kind of “poor me” way of dealing with negative experiences.  I started to accept the belief that I was truly powerless.  I wanted to just give up so that I could escape.  When you start thinking this way, people sense it and they do one of two things.  Some just move away from you and others attack.  It is like the weak wildebeest on the African grasslands.   Its friends around it in the herd move away to protect themselves and the predators move in for an easy kill.

How I dealt with it and moved on with my life.

As much as I wanted to, I didn’t give up.  I moved on.  I got through it.  In Part 2 tomorrow, I will tell you what I think gave me the strength and encouragement to do it.  We all encounter difficulties in life.  How we deal with these and how we help other people deal with them are what differentiates those that succeed from those that don’t.  I hope that by sharing my story, you will be able to better help yourself or someone that you are close to in your life.

If you have had similar experiences in your life, I would love to hear about them.  Please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.

Photos by Tim in Sydney and colourize and saltoricco