Different people divide the strata in K-12 society differently. Some people say that there is “the popular” and “the unpopular”. I personally divide people into three categories: the popular, the not popular, and the unpopular. The first group is self-explanatory, the second group consisting of people that simply lack popularity, and the third group consisting of people that are aggressively disregarded. I’ve actually shifted between all three of these groups over the course of my K-12 experience.

When I started out, I was actually in a relatively good social position. I was friends with a neighbor who was a bit of a bully but kept the other bullies at bay for me. My father was known for being a little league coach. My mother was actively involved in PTA and the like and so a lot of people had parents that knew my parents. And I played sports so a lot of kids knew me from that.

It was, alas, not to last. The biggest problem was that I started gaining weight in about the second grade. It was the biggest problem, though oddly it didn’t actually start causing me problems until the others started to surface. The second issue, related to the first, was that I started to sweat a lot. Given that I don’t have a good sense of smell, I didn’t fully appreciate the need to shower and better groom myself.

The third and fourth are also related. I became friends with Clint, who was a social liability. Clint also had an odor problem and was one of the scrawniest kids you ever saw. He also had ADHD (like the serious kind where you jump out of your chair and for no reason start running around the classroom). So there was a little bit of tarnish-by-association involved. But as important as that was that he and I got along so well that we often didn’t need anybody else. So while the other kids were playing kickball or whatever, he and I were off in our own corner doing our own thing. That sort of self-segregation between you and everyone else (except an unpopular cohort) is a pretty poor strategy.

I was really rather oblivious to the whole need to build and maintain relationships. People had always been there and I had my friends and it was never a problem. Until of course it would become one. When I needed people to have my back and realized that there were none there because I hadn’t made the time and effort to try to include myself. This would become a persistent problem, but it was definitely one that started at West Oak Elementary.

I was becoming vaguely aware of it being a problem. By the fifth grade I had noticed some problems occurring and started tut-tutting Clint about getting too animated. “Think of the casual observer,” I’d say. In other words, don’t do anything that someone who happened to be looking in your direction would find inexplicably weird or mock-worthy. Unfortunately, I never took it to the next step which is to get to know people and to maintain those relationships.

In addition to my connections and my parents’ standing in the community, it was also a lot easier where there were fewer students. To know me is, if not to like me, then to at least think that I am an okay guy. In person I am remarkably inoffensive. All of this was enough to carry me through the fifth grade remaining mostly in tact. I wasn’t popular anymore, but I wasn’t unpopular. I wasn’t generally targeted. That would all change when I got to junior high.