Growing Up

"When the caterpillar thought the world was over,
he turned into a butterfly."


When I turned twelve, we moved to the other side of Malmö, Sweden, and another terrible phase started. I was tall, skinny with thin blond hair, and my parents wouldn’t buy me the latest in clothing fashions. Mother thought I looked beautiful with a corduroy coat, so she gave me one to wear.
I felt like an old lady. Everybody had cool short jackets and tight jeans from the latest designer. Far from being a beauty my classmates eagerly reminded me of that in that terrorizing way only children do to each other.
Since both my parents smoked heavily, and every day my clothes reeked. I tried to pour perfume over my clothes, and of course, that made it even worse.
I was the perfect target to start bullying, and I had no chance to run from them since my long coat would make me trip when I tried.
In the classroom for some reason I don’t remember, I sat in the boy’s row. The guy in front and the one behind me pushed the desks together so hard that I lost my breath. I started to cry, and our teacher, a very harsh lady did not have any compassion at all. She saw my tears falling down my cheeks, still she yelled out my name and forced me to stand in front of the whole class and read out loud.
The boys loved to push me around, and the girls didn’t talk to me. To this very day, I don’t know which torment was worse.
Math was a mystery to me. I couldn’t count.
Actually, I didn’t have the concentration for it. I therefore ended up in a special class to get extra help. In this class, it was the school’s worst boys and me. One particular day, our teacher told us we would play a little game. All five of us stood behind our chairs and the teacher gave us each two numbers to multiply. The one who answered wrong had to sit down. After several turns, it was between me and one of the bad boys.
I won!
Overjoyed, I was good at something. I could master this math!
When the bell rang we all ran out side. The last boy that I had beaten wrestled me to the ground while the other children cheered. He said I had sneered at him when I won, and told me never to do that again!
He punched his fist right on my nose and the blood squirted out. The blood and tears mixed in my mouth.
He was right; I would never do it again. That day I stopped counting, and I also refused to attend school.
Meetings involved Mother, the teacher, and the principal. The school nurse also attended! It went as far as she having to come and pick me up at my house. How embarrassing! Now the kids got something else to tease me about. Some of my classmates recorded a tape, talking about my long ugly toes and that I ran to the school nurse as soon as I had a fart stuck up my butt.
Later on, they played it for everybody who wanted to listen.

Sundays were the worst days. I cried the whole day, and had a nervous stomachache because school would start the next day.
A whole day spent being terrified.
Why did I have to go through all this?
When I started upper secondary school it got a little easier, but my self-esteem was lower than zero. The boys started to grow past me and the hitting stopped.
But still I could hear some guys yell, “Big bird.”
It still hurt my feelings. As a teenager I wanted to be popular and beautiful, as pretty as some of the most popular girls that hung out with the handsome tough guys.
And most of all, I wanted to feel the adults support.

Have you listen to your child/teenager today, without adding your own words?