Hard lessons

I went to school because I had to but I didn't like it.

From a young age and the very first days of my school life I learned the hard way what human nature is all about and how disgusting humans can be to each other. It made me feel isolated and alone, somewhat afraid to go to school every day, caused me to hate my parents for sending me back and yet taught me valuable lessons. Hard lessons.

Eventually I left school about half way through the final year and moved in new directions.

It was that year I met the girl who would become my wife for decades to come, when I started working at jobs far more serious and important than the part time job at the supermarket I'd had since the age of thirteen and when my life started to become more my own - I was seventeen and a half and moved out of home to find my own way forward and forward I went.

It was also right then that I decided I'd leave what happened at school behind along with the people I'd known there and to this day I've held true to that vow.

If I see someone I went to school with on the street or at an event I don't interact; I've been known to cross the street in order not to bump into them and I have a way of looking through people giving them not even a glimmer of recognition or opportunity to engage. I have nothing to say, no positive things to reminisce upon and certainly zero care-factor on their life, what they're doing or where they've been. Neither do I wish to share my own. I left them behind a long time ago, assorted detritus and garbage, and that's where they'll stay.

School was a massive learning experience for me - no, not what the teachers taught me, dumbasses one and all - but what I learned about human nature, the way people act and react, how disgusting a person can be, and how to deal with less than ideal situations. I didn't like the lessons of course, as a young lad they were brutal, physically and emotionally hurtful and destructive, but later on I began to see how they'd shaped me and how I'd used those moments to my advantage.

School, primary to high school, was years of hard lessons and while at the time it was relentless and unforgiving it made me who I am and that's a person who has designed and created a very decent life through effort and hard work and the never-quit attitude I learned early in life.

I figured others have had their own experiences, good and bad, and thought I'd open up the topic to see who wanted to share something about their own school days, experiences good or bad, and how it has shaped them. If you'd like to comment then please do in the comments below.