Dan's Story- My First Interactions with People

Thank you to Dan for this brilliant story :) I hope that things are going well for you now.


Written By Dan R. Stevenson
Copyright 2011 Dan R. Stevenson

My First Interactions with People
Copyright 2011 <Todesking>

I remember my first friend growing up was this weird kid who grew up down the street from me. He lived in this rundown looking apartment complex on a hill down the street from my duplex. The apartments were known for the near do wells that lived there. Alcoholics, petty thieves, and welfare cheats at least that is what my neighbors would say about the apartment complex inhabitants. His name was John he was the same age as me we spent most of our time tearing around the neighborhood on our big wheels. John loved to go down the big hill his apartment was on with our big wheels due to the speed we would get shooting down right into the sometimes busy street doing our best to keep from getting hit by passing motorists. We only do this when my dad was working third shift so he would be asleep and my mom was busy doing housework and taking care of my two-year-old brother. We would take turns going down the hill while the other would look out for cars because of these pine trees that created a blind spot. I looked out for John so he would not get run over like a road kill raccoon. He managed to make it down the hill without any collisions with passing cars or even a near miss. When it was my turn to shoot down the hill John was giggling his little head off. He yelled get ready, set, go! On his command I went flying down hill just in time to see a red station wagon chugging down the street right in front of the hill I was going down. I remember screaming and jerking the handlebars to the side just barely avoiding hitting the car. The driver stopped to scream at me calling me a little retard as John stood there laughing hysterically at me as I still was peddling for all I was worth to get away from that driver. He was always doing that to me just about every other time I went down the hill I almost was hit by a passing vehicle I never seemed to learn not to trust him.

My first day of kindergarten was my first real interaction with groups of people. It also showed me just how different I was compared to kids the same age as me. When my mom dropped me off in the classroom the teacher told her to sit me where my name was on the table. My mom noticed that John was going to be sitting at the table with me so she told the teacher to keep us separated otherwise I would be getting in trouble with him. So he was in the room with me at least I knew someone there. He did not show up for the first day his mother forgot to wake up so I sat there by myself trying to figure out why all these kids were screaming and crying as their mothers' left the room. My mom said it was a big relief to her that I was not crying when she left. I just sat there looking out the window I had never been in a building that high before we could see the top of the tree outside the window and this amazed me we must have been three stories up. The other kids who were at the table with me kept doing their best to push me away from the table. All they would say to me was “Your weird” or “Your crazy”. They did their best to exclude me from any activity they even asked me to take off my shoes one time when we were getting ready for the bus so they could hide them. The little shits told the teacher I hid them so she began running around the room in panic mode tearing the place apart so she would not send me home in the Western New York winter in just my socks. I know she did this not because she worried I might get frostbite but she might get into trouble for letting a weird kid go home barefoot in the middle of winter. The teacher kept yelling at me “why do you keep doing things like this?” I did not do anything it was those little maladjusted brats they stuck me with. She never would listen to me when I tried to explain what had happened. When we had to play with one another the other kids took great delight in taking toys from me telling “You can’t play with that!” they would snatch the toy from me and hand me this naked badly mauled baby doll and say “This is yours, play with this!” While every other boys were building with blocks or playing with toy cars I would be staring out the window and the teacher would be staring at me and taking notes. I remember right before we were going to be going away for summer break a few of us were taken into this room. Each one of us sat at a table with a woman we never seen before, we spent the whole day talking to one of these women. I do not remember what was asked or what was said but half the people that were in that room with me made up the most of the special education classes I was put into from 1st to 10th grade. It pretty much was the same faces for ten years. I never was good at dealing with large groups of people or dealing with any type of change so in a way the special education classes I was put into made me more comfortable but they cheated me out of a proper education since we were there just to be warehoused to keep us from distracting the normal kids.

I attended kindergarten at A elementary it taught kids kindergarten to third grade but it did not teach special education classes. They housed all the special education classes 1st to 6th grade at B elementary. But at B they taught normal 4th to 6th grade classes. All the other students were five to seven years older than me my first year there so if I was caught in the bathroom by one of the normal kids it was pretty obvious I was a special education student by how much younger I was so they would beat the sh!t out of me because I was different and they were bigger than me. In second grade my teacher did not get along with me. I rocked back and forth due to stress I encountered in school. The teacher would ask my parents if I rocked at home and my parents would tell her no. I was not stressed out at home so I did not rock there. At home I was in my own little world playing with my Planet of the Apes action figures so what was going on around me was not even noticed. She told me my rocking made me look like a little mental patient and made her nervous. She first tried to stop me by tying me to my chair with a jump rope to my chair. That did not work I was still able to rock. Her next great idea was to put my desk right next to an open door so people could see my rocking at laugh at me I guess to humiliate me into stopping all that happened is that I got some strange looks but then again it was a special education class you expect the kids in that class to be a little strange. The teacher’s last attempt worked. She decided to take advantage of my daydreaming. She would creep up to me when she saw me rocking so she could slam this bid hardbound dictionary against the top of my desk causing me to jump and be startled. Right before we left for summer she broke me of the habit of rocking. But rocking was replaced with foot and knee tapping but mostly pacing. Third thru sixth grade went by pretty uneventfully the teachers were actually pretty good. In fourth grade they started a system where we had to report to a classrooms to wait for our busses. This was when I first noticed how much more desks were in the rooms. I mentioned this to a kid I played with on my street and he told all the classes were like this except mine. I asked why and he told me his parents told him not to say anything about it and I was as smart as he was. That’s when I finally realized why I was in smaller classes. They all think I am some kind of retard. I spent fourth grade thru tenth grade telling anyone who would listen I did not belong in those classes. I am as smart as all of my friends on my street. I am a better speller, I write well, I talk better, and do the same things they do as well as them I should not be in these classes.

Finally in tenth grade I threatened to drop out of school if I was not retested. I was just going in for something to do and see my friends who live to far to walk over to their houses. I figured why should I bother with school I am in second rate classes what chance would I have at college so I gave up and stopped studying. After I did the tests in tenth grade my junior year they told me I was going to be put in remedial classes to get me up to speed but when I graduated to twelfth grade I only had to take English I had enough credits to graduate so it was a little too late. They never told me if I was learning disabled or not they just booted me out of those classes. When I went for my evaluation for Aspergers syndrome at age 40 the psychologist said he saw no signs of learning disabilities. He told me I was robbed of a proper education I would have benefited from a proper science or English class I believe, who knows how my life would have turned out all my friends went to college while I bounced around from one low paying job to another.