Memoir
At Nine, I Promised Myself I’d Fit In Someday
Never again would I stand alone on the outside
I was less than a dork. The two dorkiest boys in the whole grade barely tolerated me. They had just as many insults to sling at me as the popular kids, so I knew exactly where I stood on the totem pole. At the very bottom.
Kids know when you’re different. They sniff it out like cancer and reject weirdos without mercy. I never had a chance.
Fourth grade was tougher than it needed to be. A new elementary school opened nearby for fancy neighborhoods I had no business being around. The district lines had to be redrawn, forcing me to change schools. We were informed a few weeks before summer — just months to prepare me for the upheaval of a lifetime.
The new pecking order needed to be established quickly. Kids scrambled to fit into the same roles they left from their old schools. The popular kids clashed, feeling each other out to form new dominating cliques. The silent ones waited patiently for their turn, plucked from the shadows by more assertive personalities. The dorks playing video games and reading comic books bounced around without a care for the pecking order at all, happily sliding to the bottom to continue their LARPing. And then there was me.
