I was just a run-of-the-mill unpopular seventh grader. Up to the second semester mark, things were pretty normal for me (Getting pushed around by bullies, trying to find anyone who would actually eat lunch with me, etc…). Then the classes switched. Instead of wood shop fourth hour, I had computers. I liked the thought of it, since I was better on a computer than on a bandsaw.
Well, we get into the computer room (this was way back when the school had Apple IIe’s) and my computer has something different than everybody else’s. I guess the person before me had forgotten to shut it off. So the teacher starts yelling at me. The class laughs. After that things moved smoothly for awhile. But then we started typing. I was not too good at typing to begin with, but my real problem was my bad vision. I put my face too close to the screen. The teacher then would grab me by the back of the neck, pull me further away from the screen, and tell me to start typing while the class watched and cackled. Then he would say I was stupid and point out that my relatives were all construction workers and they had bad breath (even though it was the wrong last name he was talking about, it was still pretty mean). This occurred for a few days. Then my parents called the school and he stopped doing it. Still, it did leave an impact.
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