My mother is moving to a far away city next month and is cleaning out her house and basement of old stuff she's not taking with her. This means I got plies of stuff left with me that I don't really want.
One thing my mother dug up was every school report card I ever had as a child and teenager. She left them with me to read. At age 40, its nothing I thought I would ever have to bother with again.
I read them, and after a good cry, I'm trying to come to grips with the poor marks, the obscene critism from teachers, as well as remarks about immaturity, inconsistantcy, anti-social behavior, daydreaming in class, habitual tardiness, ect, ect.
I'm old enough to remember back to when school's punished kids with corporal punishment. Reading my grade 2 report card with all D's and F's, made me think back to a time when the grade 2 teacher made me drop my pants and underwear in a dark closet during recess, while he took off his belt to strap my behind- and then he carried it out. In the modern day world a teacher would be fired and face criminal charges for doing something like that! And this wasn't an isolated insident for me as a child in the 1970's; forever in the principals office getting the strap is a common memory of my school years.
I had trouble sleeping last night thinking about it, I had to force myself to go to work today bothered by these memories of a misguided, undiagnosed and unassisted austim childhood, where I was beaten and ostrasized at school for being different. Still in the back of my mind, I'm thinking to myself, why do I still distress over something that happened to me 33 years ago when I was 7? Why do I beat myself up over events I can never change?
The worst was that my parents never thought I might have a disability despite D's and F's thoughout my school years. I wrote my mother an e-mail today- what was she thinking? I didn't get a reply.
26 Sep 2011, 11:04 pm
I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man ! 
