What were you doing on the elementary school playground?

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In first grade, I ran around kissing the females and saying to them "Meme schmoo, I love you". A big black kid named Montreal bullied me at this time and I did the things other kids were doing, though I didn't have a particular group of "friends" that I recall.

In second grade and third grade, it was pretty much the same, minus the running around and kissing females.

In fourth grade and fifth grade, I occasionally associated with a group of two guys but it seemed like I was making paper airplanes and I played soccer with the other kids and I remember playing volleyball a few times (The volleyball actually beat the crap out of me one time when it smashed into my face.). In fifth grade, I tried joining the football game when everybody switched over to football from soccer, but I obviously didn't know how to play (I didn't watch football) and I ended up screwing up so I quit football and kicked around a soccerball in a corner of the playground practicing and waiting for people to switch back over to soccer. They never did, bastards. I also had an X-zylo that I threw around with 3 other guys towards the end of the year. During one part of the year for a few days, I also was listening to Beethoven tunes on my dad's Sony walkman. I remember Justin asking "What are you listening to?" as he was going to flirt with the females, and I said "Beethoven" and he had that "Ok, you're strange." facial expression while saying "oh, that's cool", haha.

In sixth, I played wall ball and became the "wall ball" king. I also introduced another version of wall ball that I learned back in 5th grade at another school, and people liked it and played it until they lost my tennis balls on top of the roof, then it was back to regular wall ball. I also yo-yo'd when yo-yoing became popular when a yo-yo World Expert came to the school trying to promote his particular brand of "awesome yo-yos", and I learned a few neat tricks, like "walk the dog", "around the world" and others I can't recall.

I stood away from the groups and watched from afar-I wasn't ever invited or included unless they needed someone to pick on or make fun of.

In first and second grades I played with other kids. I got in trouble once for throwing a small rock at the ground. A kid said I threw it at him but I did not. In second grade I was friends with a kid named Jeff and liked another one named Shannon in first. Those were good years compared to the others.

In third grade I suffered an operation over the summer and we moved next to the worst neighbors imagineable. I spent most of my time during recess on the swings or the witches hat going around and around. Gone were those social recesses like the ones during first and second grade. I have been the lone pariah ever since.

i mostly colored or made crafts and occasionally played "box hockey". i didn't mind see-sawing, swinging, sliding down the slide and climbing on the monkey bars.

sharpening sticks and stabbing people with them. oh those days that you couldn't get into trouble for starting fights.

Pretending I was some sort of wild animal (most often a lion or a wolf), climbing on everything and making growling sounds. xD

In first grade there was this weird game where groups of boys would kidnap girls from each other that I found alternately interesting and stupid. I think I was part of that. Don't remember second grade but by third grade or so I mostly just watched the other kids or played games on my own. Sometimes I was invited in but I mostly didn't join. I could not hack jumping rope when someone else was swinging the rope (always got tangled up) and that annoyed me I know. I liked to swing and climb on the jungle gym and that kinda stuff, especially swinging. I would swing the whole time if I could, and walked over to swing there in the summer pretty often, too. I also liked to haul books out and just read, but the teachers discouraged that. I don't remember worrying about getting bullied much but I thought playground time deadly dull if I couldn't get a swing.

Fifth grade I had a running feud with this guy who broke my glasses something like four times -- I know he snatched them off my face and stomped them at least once while I was hanging upside down on the jungle gym. My dad got aggravated because we kept having to repair my glasses but I don't think I ever told him the details. I probably pounded the guy when I was upright and he went for me but don't actually remember doing so, however he was a little dweeb of a guy and I was perfectly willing to defend myself. Some kids teased me in fifth grade about my cape (I took to wearing a big dark wool cape as my winter coat), but I just laughed at them and I don't remember any other hassling except the one guy. Then he invited pretty much everyone in class -- including me -- to his birthday party near the end of the year, which I found really odd but I went and seems like that was about the end of the feud, at least I don't remember it being an issue the next year.

Sixth grade I remember some guy trying to convince me his best friend had a crush on me and me just thinking this was the dumbest set up ever. I don't know if they expected me to go running after the guy or say I liked him or what, but I just ignored the whole thing and after a while the guy trying to set me up admitted that his friend didn't like me and kinda mumbled off. Sixth grade was also the only time I ran from a fight -- my former "best friend" (our parents knew each other and we lived near each other so we did stuff together in the summer sometimes but I never trusted her or confided in her) attacked me to impress her friends, and while I was perfectly willing to take on guys way bigger than me, I wasn't willing to hit a friend, so I ran.

To be honest I always felt sorry for her -- neither one of us was very popular, but I didn't care while she cared terribly. Worse, her older sisters would take her along to do stuff if I was there but not when I wasn't, and her mom was always saying, "Why can't you be more like [me]?" because I got better grades or stood straighter or whatever. I wasn't a great friend because if it was just the two of us I'd get bored and read a lot, too, while she wasn't a reader; I mostly came over to listen to her older sisters' record collection I suppose. It was a strange friendship all the way around. Eventually the friends she was trying to impress lost interest in egging her on to do stupid stuff likely to get her in trouble and wandered off and we went back to our old relationship because no one else wanted anything to do with her and I hadn't expected any better so I didn't mind hanging out with her again.

I was in danger in the school yard so the principal put me in a corner in the gym for recess and lunchtime. Anybody who spoke to me was punished. At the time, I was very grateful to that wonderful principal who really did save my life. But she never repealed the rule, and I kept it for many years. I'm free now.

Looking for arrowheads. The school was built on the site of an old Native American settlement. I rarely looked up. I found a few.

Pretty much the same thing from first grade until eighth (no recess in high school):

Watching my back and avoiding (at least half the time unsuccessfully) getting the crap beaten out of me. I had a few "friends" but only one ever did anything about it. He was a year older because of being held back, huge, and did not like bullying, so he assigned himself as my personal body guard starting in seventh grade. No idea why, but I certainly didn't discourage him.

Pushing people on the tire swing, because I was the only one strong enough to do it besides the boys.

First and second grade I was just another person on the playground.

In third grade we got a new student in my class part of the way through the year. She'd just moved from India. At recess the first day, she was wanting to find someone to play with on the playground (she was particularly interested in the slides) and people were making fun of her saying that us 3rd graders were too old to play like the little kids, and the only thing that was 'cool' was to sit on the swings and talk. I thought that the slides were far more interesting than this weird talking thing and didn't like everyone making fun of her, so went and played with her. She ended up becoming one of my closest friends that I've had in my life.

In fourth grade, and up through middle school I kept being thought of as immature and too interested in playing games instead of talking like the cool kids.

Some details:

In the 5th grade I remember pitching a rubber ball against the brickwall side of the school. I was throwing it in a painted graffiti box about the size of a baseball strike zone. My teacher happened to sitting on a brick/ stone arm rail by the gym doors, watching nonchalantly. I had a good arm and I threw hard into the strike zone. You could hear the buzz of the ball slicing the air, and she said "wow, you can really throw!"

Walking int the woods with a friend. Watched a girl puke up the milk served earlier. Climbing a pole on a building and getting on the roof. Getting personally summons by the Miss lady Principle to come to her office, and once there, to hear her say, " What's the problem, Todd."I said my name isn't Todd. She goofed.

Watched a kid pick up a stick and swat another kid in the face, leaving a twig stuck inside his cheek.

I think recess comprised of letting us run wild, nothing organized as far as sports, games, etc.

Humperdinck sat and read books and sometimes to vary it up, some kids would throw bits of food and rocks at Humperdinck.

When Humperdinck got to highschool, was allowed to have his hair cut and choose his own attire, instead of weird hippy clothing from bali, he was considered hot and cool. Shrug

I told stories to myself in my head (hard to explain, it was like making up audiobooks I guess) while I wondered around the playground alone ignoring everyone else. I tried sports once or twice, but I always did something wrong and got yelled at. Mostly I learned avoiding people was the safest option.

Hmm...

In prep and grade 1 I played imaginary games by myself. I tried to join in once or twice with others but was quickly discouraged. I used to play "whirlpool" where I would run across the playground, spinning round and round, and imagining I was in an ocean full of whirlpools. In prep used to daydream about having the guts to approach a group of girls in the year above me, who included a family friend, but I was never game. I was once trapped in a tunnel with pee in it by the other children. I got locked in rooms a lot by accident by teachers. Not sure why this used to happen all the time. Think I was very daydreamy and didn't realize everyone else had left.

In grades 2-4 I would get cornered in the playground a lot, teased and laughed at, when I got special lunch money to buy chips all the other kids would crowd around and take them off me until there were none left. There was one particular bully who made tormenting me her prime daily entertainment. She slapped me once. It was a game for kids to wave their hands in front of my face and pull my hair. Groups of older kids enjoyed asking me to play my recorder for them (pretending to be nice) then laughing at me. I still played whirlpools with myself, which was really awesome.

Towards the end of grade 4 the bullying was so bad I was forced to switch schools. Grade 5-6 lunches I either spent hiding in the library/playground, or trying to make friends (when I felt game). Kids would dare me to do things in exchange for a 30cent icy-pole (which more often than not I never received at the end of the dare). Some of the dares I did included sticking my hand down the toilet bowl, climbing the school fence to the construction site adjacent to the school, running across a busy street, telling the most popular boy in the grade I was in love with him (and subsequently being laughed at). I didn't mind these dares so much because during the process I felt included with the other kids - even if I was only a form of cheap entertainment to them. When I would try to read outside of the library kids would stuff tanbark down my neck and throw sticks and things at me. A group of kids led by a new bully (who primarily targeted me) would push me against the fence and make me recite swear words a lot, and make fun of me for my old fashioned "english" vocabulary. I was called by my last name by all the kids in the playground, and for years after I hated my last name because I associated it with a negative self-image.

I still got locked in rooms a lot by accident. Once I was locked in the church down the street all afternoon after a lunchtime school musical rehearsal, didn't get let out until the after school rehearsal. This wasn't so bad, because I had a great fantasy book on me at the time.