These are great stories! I didn't have friends in grade school either, the encyclopedia comments were in high school.
I figure I didn't feel too bad in elementary because I thought the pariah status was due to having less money than most other kids/families - probably not really the case but I guess I was lucky I could blame it on that. I do remember asking mom a few times about some of the snubbing, and sometimes she would say that the kids were probably just jealous. Probably not jealous of us being poor, right? hmm.
Maybe this should be a diff. thread, but what about your parents? Were they gt in your opinion? Did this seem to affect how you were raised/schooled?
I clearly remember mom stating she was in private school for a while as a kid, got switched to public and hated it. She was delighted to go back to private school and she never, despite plenty of reasons, never sent any of us to public - all 7 kids, all 12 years, plus most of us ended up in private college! Whew.
Dear dad was clearly an egghead; id'd early on as retarded by some great teacher. he was bilingual, ukrainian and english and apparently his english writing wasn't up to snuff in 2nd grade. Later went on to a masters in electrical engineering, although chemistry was his first love. he had asthma and couldn't take the fumes.
Not a lot of (verbal) input from him on the education front except to go along with moms recommendations for private school come hell or high water.
The one major thing I remember from him is he actually cried when he found out that one of my sisters didnt get accepted to the college most of us had gone to or were planning on attending. Mom of course just calmly picked up the phone and spoke with the head of the school and explained how sis would do just fine since everyone else in my fam. had - my sis is one of those people who see numbers with color and gender, etc. Does fantastic outside the box & with numbers. The head of the college gave her a shot and she did just fine in college - weird college, of course!
Mom really had the gift of blarney and the balls to use it. Probably where all that tuition money came from! She was also always talking about problem solving - giving us strategies for solving math probs in our heads or relating stories of figuring a way out of a seemingly no-win situation. She just thought that was fun stuff to talk about.
SO...parents were different too...
