Childhood Cliques

When I was a kid, social cliques and the like were simple.

At recess you played with whoever you wanted, depending on what you wanted to do that day. Sports with the boys, or pretend with the girls; I'm generalizing a bit for clarity sake. Boys and girls did mix back and forth, but more boys played sports and vice versa.

The boys would play sports; kickball, soccer, 4 square, basketball, etc.

I wasn't the best athlete, nor was I the worst. But sports had rules, and a structure; it made sense. Even if we made up our own versions of the game, there were rules you had to follow.

The girls would play pretend. House, Princesses, a tv show, etc. Unlike the autistic stereotype, I actually have an overactive imagination. There were rules, well more like guidelines; everyone had a role, and it fit in the situation. I was usually a non-human character; a dog, dragon, whatever. Humans are confusing.

That's how recess would go, it made sense, and majority of people got along.

Then we got older. You could no longer mix. If you were a boy, you had to play with boys, and vice versa of you were a girl. It made no sense to me. But I continued playing sports with the other boys.

Then we got older. Kids didn't play anymore, they just talked. And I got ostracized because I couldn't understand. There started to be cliques. The cool kids, the nerds, the sporty kids, the average kids, etc. It didn't make sense to me; the kids I played with the year before refused to acknowledge me because they were popular. I tried fitting in, tried to talk about the things they liked. I went from the weird kid everyone tolerated, to the weird kid everyone picked on.

A few teachers let me stay inside and read; but others would make me go outside.

Some kids, which I thought were friends, would play a game with me. I cringe thinking back, because I know now they weren't friends.

We would play this game called Suicide. You throw a tennis ball against the wall, if you go to catch it and fumble it you have to run to the wall and touch it before someone else threw the ball against the wall. If the ball hit the wall before you did, everyone got to throw it at you. But if you moved off the wall or flinched everyone would throw the ball again. I would stand against the wall, they would throw a tennis ball at me, but everytime they said I moved. So they did it again, and again. I didn't think they would lie, even though i stood as still as possible. And they were laughing and having fun, so I must be doing something right.

Or we would play hide and seek; odd because we were too old, but whatever. I hid, and they never found me. I thought I was just a really good hider; I wasn't.

They spent a week pretending I didn't exist. That I was invisible.

I didn't know they were picking on me. I was just happy to be with them, I didn't understand, I thought we were friends.

It wasn't until they refused to come to my birthday party that I realized they weren't. That, and when a couple of them got in trouble for a bruise from an "Indian Burn" they gave me; a few others kicked me around a bit for telling who gave it to me.

Oh, and I guess when they flat out told me they weren't my friends, I just did what they said and they thought it was funny.

We were 8 or 9 then. And it just got worse from there.