@MentORPHEUS

relentlessly bullied me

Did they most filthily and uglily insult you such as with "you don't go well" or smth?

Kidding around aside, I got bullied a lot too. Partly by smaller kids who thought they could prove their worth by starting shit with one of the larger kids (me), preferably one with bad social skills and few friends (also me). Partly by older kids who somehow got their jollies by making younger kids' lives suck a bit more. Partly by just shitheads being shitheads.

Some of the platitudes you were complaining about turned out to be true in many cases. Many of them had shitty home lives and didn't know how to deal with it, and so took their anger and frustration out on other kids. Some just needed a good punch in the nose.

Funny thing: by 9th grade, most of the bullying directed at me had stopped, and by 10th grade it just didn't happen at all anymore. Some of my previous bullies even apologized to me, and we ended up being on fairly friendly terms. I think the cessation of the bullying is partly due to everyone being somewhat more mature in high school than in middle school, and partly due to my hitting the weights and getting scary-looking along with a reputation for being one of the better wrestlers.

Heh. I hadn't thought about some of this shit in years. Some of it was my own stupid fault for failing to avoid the places the bullies were. I stubbornly kept trying to make friends in the neighborhood area instead of just sticking to other areas that were bully-free.

@Typo-MAGAshiv

Too many schools expect little boys to behave like little girls, and try to force it, instead of giving healthy outlets for aggression, etc.

VERY MUCH this. I sensed, without yet being able to understand much less adapt to in a healthy way, that school was largely about warehousing kids out of "the way" and rewarded compliance and conformity toward mundane mediocrity over all else.

One of my favorite recess toys was the hand size red rubber ball, and I remember signing up for it almost 2 weeks in advance for one recess period. The day finally came, and quickly some bully kid took it from me and punted it across the playground. I ran after it, and the kids who had caught it and were looking around with Whose ball? expressions, saw it was "Mentie's" and kicked it as hard as they could away from me. I ended up running back and forth across the playground literally driven to tears, which only reinforced the asshole kids, while the teachers tasked with monitoring the playground watched and did ABSOLUTE FUCK ALL about it, giving off a vibe it was my problem and even somehow my fault. The correct thing to have done in retrospect, was to PUNCH the second kid who thought it was funny and OK to kick it away from me deliberately, but no, that would make ME the sole bad guy in the school's eyes.

My Dad tried to take me to Aikido classes, but not only was I more interested in spazzily running around the padded gym they were held in, I angered the teacher with a disrespectful remark so they just stopped taking me. (I later took up Aikido in my late 40s and got very adept at it. The Sensei KNEW that instructor I angered all those decades before, too.) So, I never learned any fighting skills, nor got "permission" to use such if I did. On top of this, my metabolism made me tall but stick-thin. My arms and legs were unthreateningly bony, and well into my 40s I could eat limitless calories and not gain an ounce.

The bullies who were allowed to flourish without school intervention; some went on to die in motorcycle crashes while high school age, one notoriously got a life sentence after murdering his GF around age 22. Lots of the rest, made their way into the business world where their aggression and lack of ethics and empathy got rewarded by better pay and faster promotions, because that's what our Capitalist system tends to incentivize.

I ended up going into the trades despite my "intellectual prowess." Took decades before TRP to slowly grasp and fumble my way out of Blue Pill programming. I eventually started my own business and was able to live and work my principles, finding success if not ruthlessly gained FU money. Most of my peers in the industry seem cut from the same cloth as the school bullies of my youth, and they almost all jumped right on board the Bush 1, Bush 2, and now Trump trains, and like the bullies of my youth, single me out as an "other" to ruthlessly attack and bully as an avatar of their imagined "Liberal enemies." Someone brought up during a recent convo (I'm still involved in the community despite Covid lockdowns bankrupting my business) "How many other businesses do you see the customers writing glowing reviews and missing them years after they shut down?"

@MentORPHEUS

Largely, my school behavioral problems came down to constantly feeling BORED to tears with the pace of teaching to the class at large.

Same.

They (teachers, my parents, etc) knew I could do the work, because I'd ace every test they threw at me. But I steadfastly treated regular classwork and homework as if it were beneath me until high school.

Ritalin

I got put on it when my doctor (same doctor I had had my website life). It took a couple of years to get the dosing right, but it really helped me a lot, especially in high school.

I still think wrestling helped a lot more, and (with my parents' and doctor's blessing) skipped my third daily dose during wrestling season.

Too many schools expect little boys to behave like little girls, andc try to force it, instead of giving healthy outlets for aggression, etc.

@Typo-MAGAshiv

I got kicked out of QUEST within the first few weeks of 6th grade due to behavior problems.

I was spazzy and unfocused too, which annoyed my teacher but didn't get me kicked out.

I WAS given a diagnosis of "Hyperactive" as they called it then, and discovered in my 20s helping my parents clear out the garage, reams of old wet-process photocopies showing that I was in the initial UCLA clinical trials of giving Ritalin to hyperactive kids. My Mom told me it did actually help calm me down at home; instead of buzzing around the backyard, on Ritalin I would actually stop and look at/focus on individual things. It didn't help me much in school though, so my parents stopped getting it for me before 4th grade.

Largely, my school behavioral problems came down to constantly feeling BORED to tears with the pace of teaching to the class at large. That, plus moving in 2nd grade to a new school where the shithead kids picked up on my weak social skills and relentlessly bullied me, and a 2nd grade teacher who in retrospect was a party THOT who'd take her hangover bitchiness out on the class and focused a lot of this and other life resentments and shortcomings on ME. That made me feel DONE with school at a young age, a feeling which I never fully "grew out" of. That teacher incidentally was not offered to return for the next school year. Some years later, my Mom signed up for a cooking class at the adult school, and walked right out when SHE turned out to be the teacher!

I'd passive-aggressively not do my class work, so this teacher would send me to the office, where I had to sit in the presence of the bitchy old authoritarian biddy school secretary, with the sound of ditto machines in the back going "Ka-chunk! Ka-chunk!" endlessly. I wasn't any more interested in what I found stupid and mundane classwork in the buzzing fluorescent fixture environment of the school office. Early on, the bell rang and I stood up and said, "Well looks like it's time to head for recess." That old cunt secretary said in her bitchy-best authoritarian tone, "It looks like it's time for you to SIT BACK DOWN AND DO YOUR WORK!" I can trace my hatred of authority and fully checking out of giving a shit about school directly back to that moment.

My Dad worked a lot of 60-80 hour weeks in defense contracting, and my well-meaning Boomer Mom raised me as a Blue Pill AF "nice guy". Lots of bullshit platitudes like "The kids just bully you because they're JEALOUS" and "You need to just MAKE FRIENDS with your bullies." No, these kids were motherfucking borderline retarded which I recognized even at that age, and playing out the dysfunctional behaviors of their shitty first-wave-of-easy-divorce parents. Later, the well meaning shitty advice turned to "Just smile at girls, let them make the first move because (long overcomplicated rubric of they are the ones who get pregnant...)" Cue decades of simping to and coddling girls to watch every last one of them glom on to coldhearted aggressive asshole behaving guys diametrically opposed to the values she instilled into me. I was raised well, for a world that had already disappeared forever before I was born into it.

@MentORPHEUS my elementary school called it "FOCUS", and my middle school called it "QUEST". I don't remember what either acronym stood for. We did do some neat shit regular students didn't get to do, like logic puzzles (my favorite), and other problem-solving type shit, usually creative.

I spent most of the time in FOCUS (ironic name given my severe and not diagnosed until 7th grade ADHD), I was on thin ice for not going along with the group and doing my own thing (logic puzzles or reading a book) as well as for just being a disruption.

I got kicked out of QUEST within the first few weeks of 6th grade due to behavior problems.

What did me more good than the special academic programs in elementary school and middle school was being on the wrestling team in high school. It was an approved outlet for my energy and aggression (if anything, coach bitched at me for not being aggressive enough!), and it helped instill the discipline I needed.