Growing up poor took a damper on a lot of things, including school. As many anti bullying posters and assemblies couldn't stop the inevitable.
My mother and father got us what they could for school, but there was more important things for them to buy. Such as drugs. New, fancy clothes wasn't on the top of our necessity list.
We spent a lot of time going through lost and found just trying to find a coat for the winter and a pair of jeans because my last pair just ripped. The most embarrassing part is wearing the coat we got from the lost and found, then the child who actually lost it noticing it was theirs. It had their initials on the tag of the coat. Next time, my mother would learn to rip off the tags.
My sister and I got made fun of a lot. We were outcasts. But somehow, it was still better than being home. Being stuck in a place where your mother and father fought most the time, and if they weren't fighting, they were doing worse things.
We got made fun of for what we wore. The holes in our shirts that was right in our armpits. The rips in the seams of our jeans, because they were 4 years old. Wearing the same shirt for a week straight because my parents couldn't afford to do laundry this week.
I remember being corned in the girls bathroom my first grade year. You don't think kids can be mean that young, but they can. The girls all sat there and made cruel comments and jokes on the purple sweat pants I was wearing because it was he only clean pair of pants I owned. Making fun of the Halloween top I was wearing from two years ago because it was March. Making jokes about last week when I wore a pair of jeans to school that had ripped while I was playing on the playground. Everyone saw my princess underpants. Everyone laughed.
I remember going home and crying to my mother who forgot what I was talking about two hours later because she was high. My father always told me that crying was for your pillow. I had to keep these instances to myself, because no one cared. I should just ignore it.
I learned to stay in during recess with my teachers. I would watch the children play and laugh throughout the playground. I wanted to play. I didn't want to be tormented again. It was just safer inside. I would do extra credit work and help the teacher decorate the classroom.
The teacher, Mrs. Cameron, knew my home life wasn't all that perfect. She would talk to me about not letting anyone make me feel less of a person and giving me words of wisdom quoted out of her favorite literature. She saved me from being tortured with the cruel words of other children who had it easier. Children who got brand new clothes every year and a brand new backpack and didn't have to use the same 5 pencils throughout the entire year because god forbid father had to buy more. Children who woke up everyday knowing that they would come home to their father. I didn't have such luxuries.
My luxuries included getting a new backpack from Salvation Army. It included coming home to both my parents not fighting and sober. It included not having to play hide and seek from our landlord because my parents haven't paid rent for months. It included owning one outfit that wouldn't get me made fun of.
My luxuries were things other kids didn't even have to think twice about. That's what they didn't understand. Can you expect a kid to understand that not everyone gets everything they want. That not every kid goes home and sits at a dinner table having a family meal. That some kids, are neglected. My sister and I were neglected.
