Welcome to Hell. I mean Private School. Part 1: Junior High

The title alone perfectly describes my high-school experience.  I do not ever want to go through any of it again.  My children, should I ever have or adopt any, will never set foot on the grounds of that school unless I know for a fact that it has drastically changed for the better since I was last there.

This is not going to be a humorous rant in the slightest.  Nor do I intend it to be.  I will not directly name names, nor will I make any attempt to exaggerate things.  I will do my best to be completely honest about it.  There will be a lot of hate and anguish coming out of this post.  Most of it is because of what happened to me there, and the deep psychological effects it has had on me.

The very first thing to keep in mind is that this was not a school with a history of gang-related violence or anything terrible like that.  This was a private Christian school.  At least in name only.  In practice, the faculty didn't act the part (but were really great at talking the part), and the students didn't even try to talk the part.  There were only a few exceptions to this rule.  Most of the faculty that actually did care have either been teaching there since before it went to hell or left after no more than two years there if they started after it went to hell.  As for the students, I have respect for only a few of them.

The problem started with the superintendent of the school.  He didn't give the slightest fuck about the students.  His only care was making sure the school didn't get any negative press.  This was actually the entire topic of one of the lectures that I was given.  That's right; he didn't even bother to try and hide it.  As for why I was given that lecture, just keep reading.  You'll find out eventually.

Some of the more terrible examples of the superintendent come from how totally lazy he was.  He was too lazy to walk to the elementary school building, a walk that took 3 minutes at the most; instead, he used a segway.  Unlike the groundskeeper and his golf cart - which he used to keep all his equipment with him as he worked, there is no excuse for the superintendent using a segway.

But he wasn't the first sign that this school was big trouble.  It started in junior high, where I can name only one teacher who actually cared.  She also was the only one that could really teach.  She retired after I moved on to high school, since she was getting old.  The rest, well, they might as well have told me to go fuck myself whenever I asked them for help with a bully problem.

Oh yeah, there was a massive bully problem because of this.  Naturally, I was the target, because I was the new kid.  Oh, but it wasn't just name calling.  It went much beyond that.  The regular teacher response was "oh, just ignore them."  Sorry, but there are two problems with that.  One, if you react once, THEY WILL NEVER. FUCKING. STOP.  EVER!  It doesn't work one bit.  Two, it's kind of hard to ignore them WHEN THEY'RE FUCKING BEATING YOU AND SHOVING THEIR HANDS WHERE THEY DON'T BELONG.  (This all actually happened on more than one occasion.)  Again, just ignore them was the only response.  I think once a teacher told the other to stop it, and didn't even enforce the command at all.

Once the bullies realized that the teachers didn't care at all, at this point, they decided to go after me even more.  At this point I was just infuriated.  Nobody did fucking anything about it, so I saw that I had no choice but to do something about it myself.  I started fighting back.  And apparently that makes me the problem child.  I was the one getting into trouble in every instance.  Once the bully also got into trouble.  But that was it.  They didn't even care to investigate.  They just naturally assumed that I was a problem child.

Seeing as how the bullies could get away with anything, they decided to start a rumor about me.  Naturally, that I had a death list and was going to shoot up everybody at the school.  Under normal conditions, this kind of rumor would go unnoticed, and be laughed at for being ridiculous.  But because it was me, the school's problem child, the faculty didn't think so.  They called the cops on me.  I had to talk to the police about a rumor, and my parents were there.  I had to try my best to calmly explain everything.  Somehow, I wasn't locked up without a trial, which is what I was expecting at this point.  Even after all this, they still didn't care!  If I remember correctly, it was at this point that the superintendent gave me that lecture about not wanting the press to hear about it.  Today, I would have marched straight over to the local newspaper and told somebody about it.  About how THEY CALLED THE POLICE OVER A FUCKING RUMOR DESIGNED TO MAKE LIFE MISERABLE FOR THE EASY TARGET THEY DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT!

What I love is that it was only now that the school started investigating.  Only they were working for the bullies instead.  Somehow, the school managed to pick up so many incriminating pieces of evidence against me that were taken completely out of context.  One example is when I was talking guns with one of the few people who didn't hate me and mentioned that my dad owned an SKS rifle.  Apparently, the school thought that this was the gun I would use.  Never mind that at this point in time I had never even seen the thing.  Another brilliant example is that I once waited in ambush of somebody with a sharpened pencil.  The truth is that it was outside of the high school art room.  I carried the pencils with me because, like everybody else in the class, I didn't want to bring my whole backpack with me when all I needed was the pencils.  No; For me, that was the weapon.  Plus, I was waiting there to talk with who I believe was the same friend I mentioned the SKS to.  If I remember correctly, I got kicked out of class there for violently complaining about the bully problem, and was waiting for the class to end so I could talk to my friend a bit on the walk back so that I could calm down.  It truly is amazing the dirt they kicked up against me.

I really should have known better at this point.  I should have absolutely begged my parents to send me to another school.  I should have begged to go to the local gang-infested public high-school in a terrible neighborhood.  Even that would have been better than my experiences at high school.

Oh, and it only got worse when I actually got to high school.