AskBeehaw

Yes, but I'm going to start with what I took away from it, which is that living well is the best revenge.

I was going into fourth grade when my family moved, which took me out of an advanced curriculum and landed me in a parochial school. That school year was a repetition of everything I had done scholastically the previous year - my experience and boredom with the topics instantly made me persona non grata to the teachers and the other students. The school's solution, after I completed and turned in all the coursework for the year, was to give me the next year's work to do but all that did was compound the problem. Each parent teacher conference my parents would hear the teachers say that they hated me, and during classes they would join the classmates complaining about my participation or lack thereof.

In sixth grade I broke the growth plate in my hip which put me on bed rest for four months before starting physical therapy. During that time I completed all the book work for seventh and eighth grade as well, but another person was also industrious; someone had created and emailed a "hit list" around (only a few years after Columbine), and all the students in my class and others named me as the most likely suspect to the police. I hadn't done it, but that didn't prevent me from being questioned by federal and state agents, nor did it stop them from seizing my family's computer or the apple II e I had rebuilt. After that I was an even greater pariah in school. The police eventually found the person, but because they were a minor their name was never released and no authority ever officially cleared my name - even to school administration.

The last two and a half years were hell. Projects were assigned but I had nothing to do besides self isolate during class. Teachers who disliked me before now treated me as an aspiring killer. Groups outside of school didn't want to have "the death threat kid" involved with them. I started borrowing high school and college textbooks from the library.

When my class was set to graduate from eighth grade to move on to high school, I had received and turned down four separate full ride scholarships to several of the private high schools in the area and asked that they disburse the money between other students who had needed assistance to attend. During commencement they had some award they wanted to present me for all the acceptances I had gotten, and I used the time I was given to say "thank you" to instead list how much money was newly available as financial aid (knowing full well that most of them had received some). I went to a different school than all of them, then a different college, and I almost never think about them at all.