The Dunce Cap

yes perhaps I have lived much of my life unaware... I don't know what i would have done had it not been for the sexy part. (joke)

No, it means you like yourself exactly how you are.

Wait, I forgot who this is coming from.



ok, let me put it this way chicken hawk.
I don't think you are sexy.

therefore, you are not sexy.

maybe is I was 13 years old, but, that's the folly of youth.

Since this thread has shifted to another angle....I'll keep this brief, and focus on just one thing.

I've been sorting through junk that I've got stored in my shop, for the last few nights, I've been going thru all my....well, I guess you would call them hobby boxes...the little plastic boxes that folks keep beads and such in. I keep various things in mine...wire nuts, connectors...bolts, nuts....very tiny screws...etc...and just some random things that are small and have no other place to be stored. Many of these random things, I've had for over twenty years, and some even from childhood....I found one of those tonight, and thought of this thread.

When I was in the third grade, my grandparents bought me a really cool little slide rule/pencil box, I'm sure many of you have seen them...pretty basic little rule, but I thought it was really neat. I spent a lot of time playing with numbers...and this just fit into my little numerical world....I also played with string a lot....still do.

My teacher that year was a total ****, and I say that with gusto....she lived in my little town...still does, about two blocks over...and trust me, she's still a ****. Anyway, at first sight she took it from me, even though I aruged that it was only made to use with addition and subtraction...which she knew I had no problem with...but she still said I could use it to cheat. Seriously, something like that is just a toy, it takes longer to slide the cursor to the proper place than to do the math in your head....even at that level.

As a compromise, she let me keep the cursor, but kept the rule...and of course at the end of the school year, when she was supposed to give it back...she had lost the rule....I still have the cursor. I picked it up tonight, thought about tossing it, then put it back in the little tray. I firmly believe that harboring old grudges do no good whatsoever...but the little cursor represents far more than I would ever say...or write... it embodies an entire school year of nearly daily nitpicking nonsense that I endured....my personality made a drastic change during and after that year....especially my outlook on education....and I will stop there....in basic terms, I keep the little thing to remind me that some people are just assholes, because they can be and get away with it.

Seriously, it is time to develop psychic abilities...

There were some good things that came out of the dunce cap incident for me. That was the day when I stopped looking toward the best and brightest most popular classmates and noticed the rejected and down trodden of my classmates. That was the day my classmates noticed a change in me. I was no longer all about striving to be one of the brightest but the most sympathetic. Out of this sympathetic nature I believe I matured and became a real human being. Unlike many of my classmates who jeered and laughed at me I was freed from the peer pressures and fake facades that still plague my old school mates event to this day. My walls came down and I became real, truly empathetic and accessible. Even my teacher took a liking to me where before all she would do is complain how I bit my fingernails nails and give me an F every day in health. If you got an F in health you could not buy candy at the school store. I was suddenly able to learn from her... maybe she finally began to teach rather than preach...

Not literally, but figuratively. When I was a kid in grade school, I did a lot of fighting, because I wore eyeglasses, and other kids always picked on me. I learned early on that fighting them stopped the teasing.

My older brother's report card used to have the American flag and gold stars on them, while mine would say "c.i. fights too much!"

Any fighting I ever did was usually a response to someone attacking me physically. Those years were terrible growing up gay and out in school. I was the only one who didn't know I was out. I was born out of the closet I guess. I was punched, ridiculed, on a daily basis. Most all teachers especially men turned a complete blind eye to my needs. Yet a few female teachers took me under their wing and I perhaps would have never gotten an education had it not been for them. There were some male math teachers who helped me too perhaps "science" was what made them respectful of me.