It didn't take me very long to develop some "intense illness" every April 1st so I could give school a complete miss on that day.

Sheesh! sounds like if you lived some pretty Mad Max danish "April Fools Days" right? LoL

Maybe the "challenge" was to see if they could get me to lose my cool.

Go no farther! I'm sure and I bet that was the only motivation. :)

Pretty much everybody cut me a very wide path, after that. Not because I was powerful, but because I was clearly crazy.

Poor feared school bully. He never thought that to be truly crazy, you only have to have a ton of sense of humor. Hahahaha