***EnCoUnTeR aCtIvItY tWo

The first time I felt marginalized was in the 3rd grade.  Somewhat like Claire from "Passing" for our small town, my life had become the talk of the town, or at least of the kids at school.  Let me start at the beginning.

Lots of kids' parents got divorced.  In fact, by high school, if your parents were still together, you were the one being marginalized.  My story was different because of the drama involved.

Divorce can cause a lot of bitter feelings, and make people lash out.  Mothers talk to other mothers, and they talk to their kids, and kids talk to other kids, and so on.  So, when I was 7 or 8 years old my parents got divorced.  I don't know what happened to our house, all I remember is having to go from small town Creston, IA, to Des Moines which was about an hour northeast.  We had to stay in a shelter.  Which I don't remember being that bad.  They had a big playground for the kids, and there were two sets of bunk beds in each room.  I got the top bunk, and my mom shared the bottom with my 3 year old sister.  That was the first thing kids started talking about when I got back to school.  You gotta love small town gossip...

The second, and far worse, part of me feeling outcast was when kids started talking about my dad being gay.  Of course he wasn't, but somewhere along the line, the bitterness my mom felt from the divorce had caused her to start a rumor to make herself look better (I'm guessing) and it had gotten around.  Fast.  Other parents were talking, and somehow their kids found out, and they would tease me at school.  I didn't really know what was happening, but I knew it made me feel really bad, and really sad, so I had to start seeing the school counselor.

I don't have a lot of memories about the event in my life, but I do know it was the first and possibly the worst time I felt like I didn't belong, or I wasn't in the norm.  I don't remember a lot of acting out because of it, more like acting in.  I kept to myself a lot after that. 

At the time, I learned that people were basically bad.  That people like to laugh at other people's misfortunes.  There was this one girl, Tarah, that teased me so much that I wanted to fight her.  I remember feeling so much anger, even up till high school, when people started picking on her.  I was happy they were picking on her.  I thought she deserved it.  Karmic justice.

Now I can see that kids are just KIDS.  When there is something going on they don't understand, they talk about it.  Most of the kids were just curious, if anything, but it was just the one girl that was being mean.  And I'm sure she had her own set of problems at home that caused her to be a bully.  Looking back, I feel sorry for her.

I still believe that people are mean when they think something is funny, but really, it is just our nature.  The 8 year old that would have taken me aside and given me a hug would have been so far outta the norm it would have been ridiculous.  Kids are kids.  All they have to go by is what their parents have taught them.  Which if their parents are going to gossip like that in the first place, they don't have a chance anyway.  The moral of this story is that children need to be taught morals at a very young age, so that this kind of stuff doesn't happen.  People need to be better parents.  And better teachers.  Teachers have an obligation, especially these days, to make sure that bullying isn't going on at school.  Lots of things can make a person feel marginalized.  This is just the event in my life that stuck in my head.

Until next time,

Keri Jo