A brief history of my social survival skills - part 1

 I think I've always had trouble making friends, although it took me years to realize it.

In fact, my relationship with school got off to such a bad start that I developed a spectacular case of school refusal in Grade 1. I skipped about half the school days. On some mornings, I made it all the way to the school gate, threw up, and had the van driver take me straight back home.

Nobody really knew why.

Looking back, I can think of a few possible reasons. I had no friends. Zero. I disliked most of the girls in my class. Somebody drank from my soft drink bottle without asking – an unforgivable crime.

And to make matters worse, I couldn't stand my teacher.

To be fair, the teacher may not have been uniquely terrible. She was probably the same with all the children. The problem was that I had just left nursery school, where I received what can only be described as princess treatment. I went from being the center of the universe to being one anonymous child among a sea of confident, well-adjusted, posh kids.

I did not handle this transition gracefully.

There was no school counsellor involved. Nobody figured out why I was getting sick every day. Eventually, my father solved the problem using a highly sophisticated intervention involving the threat of a good beating if I didn't get into the van.

Remarkably, it worked.

By Grade 2, I had settled down and discovered that I quite liked listening to teachers talk. Looking back, that may have been the beginning of a lifelong habit. I still enjoy sitting quietly and listening to people explain things.

The friendship situation, however, was less straightforward.

In primary school, my only consistent friends were two kids from my grade who travelled in the school van with me. Looking back, I enjoyed the van ride more than the actual school day. The van was where the social success happened.

At school, I didn't really have anyone to sit with. At one point, I'm pretty sure I appointed a girl as my "best friend" without consulting her. I even got my parents to invite her family over. To strengthen the friendship, I also invented two elder brothers. Apparently, my childhood understanding of friendship was that if your personality wasn't enough, you could supplement it with fictional siblings and all the fun activities I did with them.

I lied to another friend about going to India because she had gone to India and I wanted us to have something in common to talk about. Thankfully, as I got older, that desperate need to fit in gradually died down. Either I matured or I simply ran out of material.

Then came middle school.

In Grade 7 or 8, our school counsellor organized a friendship activity. We had a period in our timetable for life skills. The lesson was probably supposed to be about kindness or connection. What it actually taught me was a masterclass in in-group versus out-group loyalty.

Each student received a friendship band and had to tie it on someone they preferred. The catch was that the recipient couldn't tie it back on the person who gave it to them.

Most people sensibly chose within their own friendship groups. I, however, saw an opportunity to make an independent decision. There was a girl I related to more than the students I usually sat with, so I decided to be bold and tie my band on her.

This was my first and last attempt at social innovation… at school, anyway.

The girl I sat with interpreted this as a betrayal of the highest order. Others seemed to agree that I had violated some unwritten alliance system. Apparently, I did not deserve a friendship band because I had failed to demonstrate proper group loyalty.

This is probably why my evolutionary line is dying out. Excellent intentions. Terrible survival instincts.

By the end of the activity, I was the only person in my class without a friendship band on my wrist.

It was deeply embarrassing. Everyone felt sorry for me, which somehow made it worse. If I could go back in time, I would simply tie the band on my own wrist and save everyone the trouble. Early adolescent brain development was not working in my favour.

Eventually, the counsellor intervened and arranged for someone to tie a band on me out of sympathy.

As I write this now, I'm struck by a detail that feels almost absurd.

A recent school refusal case I handled reminded me of all this.

And somewhere along the way, I became a school counsellor.

Of all possible career paths, I chose the profession represented by the person who accidentally facilitated one of the most socially humiliating experiences of my childhood.

Maybe that's how these things work. Maybe somewhere between throwing up at the school gate, inventing imaginary brothers, and standing alone with an empty wrist, I learned something important about belonging, exclusion, and how lonely school can feel when you don't quite fit in.

 

Terrible teen years...and my looks were not contributing to the social survival strategy.