I Escaped, But Only Just - Part 5: Aloof From My Peers

I attended a Jewish High school in the north of England that bore a vague resemblance to the kids from the Beverly Hills. Our family weren’t rich - and therefore, I didn’t belong socially.  In time, I would face a new issue that marked me as different: labels I hadn’t paid attention to before.  Remedial. Autistic. Slow.  Educationally Subnormal.

The first day passed uneventfully, though, and I found myself looking forward to going back the next day.  Carrying a briefcase of my own gave me a strong sense of pride and I soon got used to the routine of making my way to a different classroom for each subject. French…art…Jewish studies…music… woodwork…general science.    

On my third day, I wandered into the woodwork room for the last lesson on the timetable. I was looking round the room and searching for an empty bench, not really listening to the teacher, when he yelled, ‘Are you bloody deaf?’  

I realised he was speaking to me.

The animosity that would characterise my years at the school had begun.         

***
It progressed slowly, like a steady drop in temperature before the big freeze. The odd contemptuous glances from other pupils. The headmaster’s indifference each time he breezed past me.  A boy in my class smirking at me as I stood near the tuck shop because he knew I couldn’t afford sweets or crisps.

‘He hasn’t got any money,’ the boy snorted, pointing me out. ‘He’s poor.’

Whenever I could, I would sneak away to the piano in the school hall during the lunch break to wait my turn.  Mostly, I played by ear, as I hadn’t yet received formal training. People at school occasionally made positive comments about my playing. The music teacher, who also took us for history, gave me some basic encouragement.

Mostly, though, I spent the first term and a half not really belonging to any social group, my academic standards lower than they should have been, the deep rooted fears nestling and waiting to come up to the surface and spill over into adulthood.  

Results. Maths (Remedial) Test  54 percent, French 8 percent: “the subject is too hard to for this pupil”,  Science 12 percent, Geography 16 percent

***

Temper.  It happened slowly, like water in a boiling kettle waiting to spurt through the tiniest of holes. A newcomer had joined our year part of the way through term, dark with those almost perfect Mediterranean features that I longed for myself. He was popular from day one. One morning, I caught sight of him talking to the girls in their cloakroom.  Charging into the cloakroom, I punched him in the head.

Such events would occur often from that point on.