The story of a rejected kid

In writing the previous two columns, I expected to get quite a few responses, though not in the way they came.

I deliberately tried to make it clear that in “Religion, Relatively Speaking,” that though I was rebutting a Christian writer, it did not mean I was anti-Christian. Yet, the first response I got in my mailbox was a message from someone who thinks he’s the 21st Century Jonathan Edwards. (Quite honestly, he would have fared much better with me if he had tried less “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and more “Sunshine.”)

I received three other responses, and though each person was also mistaken in what I was aiming for, at least they were much more intelligent. With “Tolerance vs. Hypocrisy,” I got some of the praise I expected, but none of the criticism, though I was much less careful in choosing my words.

Strangely enough, with the last piece I wrote about my home town, two people complained about how I was being negative about blacks and that maybe I should make up for it by writing a positive piece. That was in spite of the fact that my very last words in the article were to the effect of that even though I hated Gary, being from there is part of me and maybe that isn’t all bad. (You know, I really think some people just look to be insulted.)

I had always hated that I grew up the way that I did, because of all the things I missed out on.

Either it was because I couldn’t do them (thanks to the restrictions of the Jehovah’s Witnesses) or I didn’t have the social knowledge necessary to recognize any opportunities or engage in the opportunities I did have without looking like a complete fool (also thanks to the Jehovah’s Witnesses).

Yet, though I didn’t get to do a lot I wish I had, I now also recognize that if I hadn’t had those constraints on my life, I never would have realized how great it is to be free of them. Also, if I had never had them on me, I probably either would have been some sort of conformist, either with the culture that I was surrounded by in Gary or the one I found myself in during my high school years.

For the longest time, I wanted to fit in somewhere. And I tried, as much as I could. Even though I didn’t have the knowledge, during sixth and seventh grades (the first ones I had free of the Jehovah’s Witnesses), I tried to emulate black culture, or at least how I saw it. I thought that if I got the clothes down, I could pick up the language and attitude as I went along. Of course, that assumed that someone would actually want to teach me; most of the time I was made fun of for not knowing it.

I eventually gave up toward the end of seventh grade after three or four people decided to beat me up for sitting too far back on the bus (at least that’s the best reason I could come up with). I decided then to try to leave Gary for high school, and the visit to the school I would have been going to in the city was all the confirmation I needed that I was making the right decision.

I ended up at a Christian boarding school in Tennessee, where, due to the fact that by then I considered myself a conservative, I was sure I would get along fine. Instead, that’s where I learned how painfully out of touch I was with how the world worked. I embarrassed myself more than I care to remember, though I was much more comfortable there than at home (not to mention I had more real friends there than at home, whatever the hell happened to them).

Actually, I was comfortable there my first three years there. Due to a couple of events (one involving an idiot’s parents suing the school for not realizing their son would be stupid enough to jump off the top of a climbing wall, another involving another kid running away from campus after being harassed) the school – which was once more free – became more restricted and fundamentalist. Once the school allowed the reading of The Color Purple, but after a group of parents protested, it was removed from the curriculum. (I guess they were afraid their sons would become lesbians or something.)

By the time my senior year came around, I really started feeling like a caged animal, and by the end of the year I knew (and I made it known through my first column, “Get Real”) that I was a conservative no longer.

I applied to six universities due to the fact they were medium-sized schools, with the reasoning that they were large enough to afford privacy, but small enough that I wouldn’t be seen as a number like at state schools.

I came to SMU (oh sweet, sweet irony) because it offered more financial aid than any of the other schools. I have since learned that was a terrible reason to come, and that I probably could have taken a big hit for loans my first year and have received more aid at my first-choice school during subsequent years.

The sad thing is that every positive experience I’ve had here – and there are many – will probably be negated due to what I had to go through in Perkins Administration. The one thing I have been afforded is the ability to learn how to be myself, which you can see in this column.

I know I’ve made some mistakes during my life, some of which I probably never will be forgiven for, as much as I would like to be. But given everything that I’ve gone through, and though I know I could be happier (any introverted girls out there with a unique sense of humor and personality want to date a fat kid?) I don’t think I could have done that much better.

Now, off to spite all those people who gave me a hard time throughout my life.