As a kid I was categorized as a GATE student, “gifted and talented” and instead of putting me with other people in my peer group they decided to put me in the lowest performing school in Savannah GA in the hopes that somehow I would make the other kids smarter. What happened instead is: 1. Most of the teachers openly hated me because I would correct their work on the board almost every day. My math teacher was a 300lb sassy black woman who got so tired of me correcting her that during a PTA meeting she told my mom that I needed to focus less on being right and more on getting a bench press to get stronger so I wouldn’t get bullied so much. Looking back, kind of a based recommendation to be honest but yeah that really pissed my mom off for understandable reasons. 2. Instead of listening during class, since I’d already read the textbook cover to cover I just ended up stealing office supplies from the back of the classroom and making makeshift weapons to shoot folded Post-It notes via every firing mechanism possible with rudimentary office supplies 3. I joined a gang called The Kings, which was one of the more chill gangs but which got disbanded when one of the leaders brought a .45 silver plated Desert Eagle to school to show everybody. He was expelled and the rest of us were not really about that life so decided to take it easy. 4. The only fight I’ve ever gotten into in my life occurred during this time in middle school. One of the hoodrats from a different area of the hood decided to make fun of my mom so I beat the brakes off him then threw him into a brick wall. We became friends after tho. 5. My biology teacher was stupid hot so instead of listening during class I would just randomly hit on her in the middle of class. I don’t remember being too saucy with it but one of my buddies during that time reconnected with me and yeah he said I was just SUPER out of pocket with zero filter whatsoever (not much has changed) most likely out of sheer boredom more than anything. Sorry Ms. Brown you were a real one. 🤝 6. After I left the gang I wore dress shirts and slacks to class because that was just what I was comfortable wearing if I wasn’t wearing baggy jeans and a D.A.R.E. T-shirt so I was relentlessly bullied for that and guys would randomly lean over into my lane in the hallway while walking past each other and just yell “FAG!” into my face. On the other hand black women loved me and at least once a week one of them would randomly squeeze my ass and tell me “Damn you fine” which I took to be a sign of high respect in their culture. 7. Because I had come to Georgia from California I had essentially zero preconceived notions about racism etc and honestly most of the poor black kids were cooler than the poor white kids so thankfully they took me in as their token white friend. However this did involve having to witness just an egregious amount of fights between black girls. I would wager very few people in this world have seen as much weave thrown around as I did during my middle school years. I never cheered them on or anything like the black guys did I just sort of watched in a mixture of curiosity and horror. I think they kind of sensed I was uncomfortable so every once in a while one of the black guys would put his arm around me and steer me away like “You don’t gotta see all this man it’s probably going to get ugly.” I can’t even imagine what schools are probably like nowadays toward smart young white guys given how it was 30 years ago. Gotta be just crushingly brutal by this point.