Childhood Teasing

I am in no way advocating teasing, which has become a form of bullying in today's works. When I was a kid, teasing was name-calling, rude comments, verbal abuse meant to diminish a kid's self-esteem and help the teaser feel superior. It was mean, but it was also easy to ignore if you had social support from friends and/or family.

Bullying, on the other hand, was more than picking on someone verbally. It involved physical harassment, beatings, threats. You or your property had to be touched in some way in order for the behavior to be considered bullying.

We don't condone violence any more, so we have had to elevate the verbal teasing to "bullying" because that's all that's left to uninformed children to assert their dominance and increase their self-esteem without actually improving themselves. I wonder if "dirty" looks will become the next generation's form of bullying now that we (society) are combating teasing. Every story has at least two sides.

But I digress. This post is supposed to highlight the positive outcomes that a childhood of teasing can bring, if one is willing to stetch their optimism muscles. Again, I am not condoning maltreatment of any kind toward anyone. I wish the world saw all people treating each other with mutual respect. I also wish we could truly learn to judge behviors separately from the person. That said, let me share what I have finally chosen to accept from the teasing I received as a kid.

I was picked on mercilessly by my two brothers--one older & one younger. Their favorite target was my weight. They came up with hurtful names for me and frequently enjoyed turning them into little songs to be sung ad nauseam. I could have taken the predictable route and become anorexic. That would have saved me from a lifetime of scorn that almost all overweight individuals experience. I did not, though, and I am still overweight and all too conscious about it. What the teasing did do, however, was to create an extreme level of self-consciousness or self-awareness. I decided that I didn't want to give anyone any reason other than my girth to ridicule me. I made sure that every bit if my body was always clean. I always chew gum after my meals to make sure that no food sticks around. I am conscientious in my bathing & restroom habits so that I do not produce an offensive odor. I keep my face as clean as possible to keep acne at bay. Even my ears are squeaky clean so that I rarely have any wax or dirt in or around them.

Because I am overly sensitive to the stereotypes surrounding fat people (yeah, I actually used the "f" word!), I am also very self-conscious of my eating habits. I don't like to eat in front of others. The last this I want is to bring back the memories of school kids (and my brothers) calling me a pig (or various other appellations) because I dared to eat. Now, when I am compelled to eat in front of others, I try to limit my portions to the minutest amount and I am all-too-aware of table manners. I try to do everything I can to divert attention from myself.

Speaking of diverting attention, that's the other conditioning I received from the non-weight related teasing. My family wasn't rich. We never had more than we needed. Kids at school loved to pick on others whose clothes or backpacks, etc. showed that they weren't from upper middle class. Looking back, I find this incredibly ironic as I went to the cheapest Catholic school in El Paso and the median income of the city itself was just above the poverty line. My parents gave up a lot for our education, but that didn't matter to kids who only knew how to bring others down in order to lift up themselves. So, after a while, I learned to be as inconspicuous as possible. I also learned that working hard to achieve something (grades, creative endeavors) has greater rewards than recognition.

Today I try my best to work from the background. I would rather be thanked by 1 person out of hundreds than be noticed by everyone. In fact, any recognition for my work, although much appreciated, is also very embarrassing because I don't want to be recognized. I don't want to be noticed. I don't want the limelight. Too much happens to those whom everyone is watching. And while they appreciate your greatness, people are also quicker to point out the flaws of those in the spotlight. If you don't beleive me, then just look at any newspaper or magazine or biography that mentions a famous person. No one is untouchable in the forefront.

In all, I have experienced a lot of psychological and emotional hang-ups. I took a lot of blows to my self-esteem and I continue to have many days that I don't want to be around myself. And yet, I did learn the value (and the potential power) of being in the background. I probably would not have figured that out if I hadn't been teased so much as a kid.

Growing up Geek and Not Knowing It

I never really stopped to consider what it was to be a geek. As a kid I never thought I would associate with geeks, mostly because I did not realize this was a "type" of person. I had a vague notion of what a "nerd" was because there were a few movies showing the stereotypical coke-bottle-glasses-wearing weirdo who was obsessed with computers (or fantasy, or facts, or science, or...) and panties. I knew these individuals were not supposed to be popular, though they were expected to run the world after high school or college and take their revenge on the pretty people. The term "geek" never really made it into my vocabulary until my first DragonCon in 2007. Even back then, I did not really consider myself a geek by the modern, accepted definition of the term. It was when I started talking to the other DragonCon attendees, and sharing my stories of childhood with my daughter, who completely embraced her inherited geekdom instantly, that I realized I had always been a geek deep down inside, I just never knew it. This could also be one of the myriad of reasons why it was so hard for me to find friends among the "normals" until I got to college early through a math & science academy.

It turns out that my parents may have had the seeds of geekery buried within them as well. However, they come from a generation that had no notion of such things. I kind of had a notion that my mom had the potential to be a geek. After all, it was she who had the family sit together on Saturdays to watch Star Trek the Next Generation. It was also my mom who showed us the original Star Wars trilogy so many times I began to think that she would have married Luke Skywalker if my dad hadn't come along first. My mom is not a technical Trek geek. She doesn't nit-pick technical impossibilities or try to figure out the possible (or improbable) science behind alien species. She taught us to look at the human story behind the episodes. She highlighted for us how this science-fiction world actually illustrated real-world issues like acceptance of homosexuality, intolerance of races, prejudice, discrimination, and what it means to be human. Her favorite character is Commander Data, not because he was an android, but because it was through Data that we discovered the essences of what it is to be human. Star Wars was always about the Force and finding the right path to do what was right for the greater good. It was also about finding yourself and coming to terms with all aspects of yourself--the good and the bad. This is what my mom showed me, though it took motherhood and studying psychology for me to realize it.

My father is a little bit of a different story. He was always the practical one (at least, that's how I saw him as I was growing up). He didn't seem to encourage fantasy. He always struck me as someone who preferred to live in reality, except when he was watching cartoons. My dad watched a lot of cartoons, especially old ones like Popeye and Scooby Doo. If it was animated, he would watch it. He started to draw the line, however, when the animation was no longer for kids. He won't watch animated shows that are crass, crude, violently graphic, or "adult" in nature. He has a pure heart in that respect. What really surprised me was when I realized that my dad also liked science fiction. Like my mom, he did not look for the reality in the shows; he did not try to find the plot holes caused by improbabilities. I guess science fiction was his way to express his fantasy without leaving behind reality. I didn't realize he liked science fiction until I started watching Doctor Who with my husband and daughter. I knew of Doctor Who because I remember my dad watching it on PBS. I remember sitting and watching with him, especially the Tom Baker episodes. In fact, the first time I saw another person as The Doctor (when I was a kid) who was not Tom Baker, I thought my dad was watching a completely different show. I was too young to pay attention to the larger story. I was in it just for the episode, so I missed a lot as a kid. I also remember my dad watching Twilight Zone marathons whenever they came on. We didn't have cable for much of my childhood, but when we did, he would watch many marathons of shows like The Man from U.N.C.L.E., I Dream of Jeanie, and Outer Limits. It took me so long to realize that my dad may have been a geek, or at least a sci-fi fan, because I didn't know enough to connect the dots.

My mom worked days and my dad worked nights for most of our childhood, so there weren't too many moments we spent as a family. [I have 2 brothers, 1 older and 1 younger than myself.] Also, when my older brother was about 12 or 13, he started to focus more on friends and girlfriends than family, as is the "normal" way for most people, so there was only a relatively small window of time that I can recall as "family" time (I'm not counting family vacations). A couple of the other shows we watched as a family, that I now realize fall under the science-fiction genre, included Air Wolf, Knight Rider, and the Adam West/Burt Ward Batman series. I remember sitting down as a family to watch the Superman movies, also.

Thinking back on it, I did get quite a bit of exposure to science fiction. I also got a lot of exposure to fantasy through Disney, which was another thing my mother gave us heavily with our annual trips to Disneyland and watching many Disney shows and movies. I just never realized that this meant I was growing up geek. I did expand into my own geeky interests, mainly in literature, picking up authors like Tolkien and Crichton without any influence from my parents. I spent much of my teen years trying to "find my people," as my mother told me when I went off to college. I couldn't understand why I didn't seem to fit in with the other kids in school or my neighborhood. My older brother had plenty of friends, but the geek influence also bounced off of him--he's a "normal" person and it works for him. I did finally find "my people" among other geeks. We not only had similar experiences, but the people I met in college introduced me to even more geek genres like anime and gaming. I still didn't realize that we were geeks, but I began to feel like I may have stumbled upon like-minded individuals. As I stated earlier, the whole geek thing didn't really hit me until our first DragonCon. Interestingly enough, my little brother seemed to more fully embrace his geekdom (or maybe I just noticed it) after he went to his first DragonCon in 2008. Now I know who I am and I know that I am not alone. My daughter may not fit in with the mainstream "popular" kids, but she's growing up in a world where she knows that she will have a welcome place among like-minded souls. Plus, she has found a couple kid geeks close to her age, so she doesn't have to grow up as alone as I did.

I don't know if the Geek bubble will burst in my life time (i.e. if geeks will no longer have the popular power they enjoy today thanks to true geek celebrities and many wannabe geeks out there). If it does, I at least know where I stand and I won't change it for anything. I'm very grateful to my parents for exposing me to fantasy and science fiction, and for doing it in a way that helped me find the human substance behind all of the flashy effects. It doesn't matter that I did not know I was a geek when I was a kid. It matters that I was, and I still am, a geek at heart.