As an overweight grade school kid, I attracted a bully named Dwayne. He made fun of the way I looked and often wanted to fight me. He was bigger and stronger, so I knew I didn’t stand a chance. One day after school, he followed me outside, taunting me with each step and challenging me to a fight. I can’t remember what prevented the fight, but I was always on the lookout for him after that.
During a pickup football game among neighborhood kids, one of the guys made fun of me several times during the game until I’d finally had enough. When he ended up on his back after one particular play, I ran toward him and plunged both knees into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. That gave me enough time to high-tail it out of there in an all-out sprint for home. I don’t think I ever saw him again.
Somewhere around that same time period, a neighborhood boy pinned me to the ground, holding my shoulders to the grass with his knees. From his superior position, he mocked me for not having a dad (my parents divorced when I was eight). What do you say to such a thing? Especially when you are twelve years old and really wished you had a dad at home?
Years later, I stepped into the bathroom of a bar I frequented, sporting a t-shirt from one of my favorite rock bands. When I went to wash my hands, a guy next to me said, “I didn’t know they made shirts that big!” Ironically, his comment made me feel small.
I could tell you more stories – especially about the nicknames I have picked up along the way – but you get the idea. All these experiences turned an already shy, introverted person into someone who simply wanted to exist in the margins of life.
As a result of all this, and my natural tendency toward introversion, I don’t like being in the limelight. I don’t like drawing attention to myself. And I don’t like being put on the spot in groups. In fact, I don’t really even like groups. And my experiences in them haven’t helped much.
In one group, someone suggested that I not have a cookie with the others in the group because in his eyes, I didn’t need one. In another group – at a church retreat, no less – a fellow retreater started referring to me as a blob of protoplasm. I really didn’t know what that meant at the time, but I figured it wasn’t good.
As such, I’m not much of a joiner. Oh, I might join a group once I know it’s safe, but that takes a while. If I trust the person offering an invitation, I might test the group by sitting or standing in the corner until I feel comfortable enough to participate. Or I might disappear, never to return.
Often though, rather than joining groups, I’ve tended to start my own with people who accept me. When I started a small group for local writers who were participating in National Novel Writing Month a few years ago, I got to know a woman from our offshoot writers group better. We started as friends, eventually began dating and in less than two months, she will become my wife. So I’ve learned that sometimes, stepping out of the margins can be life-changing and worth the risk.
These days, I’m quicker to challenge people who make fun of me. I just wish I didn’t have to.
