I was fairly introverted in as a child. I had 1-2 good friends throughout school and was friendly and got along with a lot of people from different clicks (I was even voted as homecoming queen) but never felt like people really "knew" me and didn't hang out with groups of people.
I memorized books when I was very young and once I could read, I devoured books. I know I could read before Kindergarten because the teacher never gave me the beginning readers that I saw other kids floundering through and thought I would die of boredom if I had to read them. Phonics was the most boring subject ever. I still remember how agonizing it was in school to wait for other kids try to get the right answers to questions.
The librarian in our small town library knew me by name and would save new books for me because I had read nearly every book through young adult and a lot of nonfiction books after a few years. If I wasn't reading, I was writing...poetry, stories, or in my diary.
I also always read ahead in class. I didn't need to study and usually did my homework in front of the TV or in another class while still in school. I always got A's. I was internally very competitive and never was satisfied to let someone else get a better grade than I got. When we graduated 6th grade, I got the prize for every subject except handwriting and it wasn't because my handwriting was less than perfect. I was extremely perfectionistic.
I had one teacher in 3rd grade who placed me in my own reading group and actually allowed me to read interesting novels and discuss them with her rather than reading the silly stories in the classroom reading books. The next teacher in 4th grade said he didn't have time to run an extra reading group for me. I was in the pull out gifted program but wondered why they only let us have a "taste" of interesting things rather than really learning French or psychology or whatever.
