h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Odd - just the other day I realized that some things from my childhood are still lapping in the backwaters of my mind - things that insulted me at the time, things I found stupid, things I tried telling adults about, but they weren't listening, because I was 'just' a kid...

It all started when I went to school, 7 years old (and just how much courage are you able to summon up at that age to tell the adults that they're wrong? Well, I tried, but...)

1) Born left-handed, but in the late 60ies/early 70ies it was still considered 'wrong' in Sweden, so they made me learn to write with my right hand. I never gave up drawing/sketching with my left hand thouhg, so I'm a bit ambidextrous today.

2) I obviously spoke Swedish with a minor Finnish accent - namely to pronounce the letters K, P and T slightly softer than the Swedes - and so they thought I didn't know the difference between P and B, or K and G, or T and D.

So far, none of my friends nor my parents had had any trouble telling the difference, but it was obviously it was too much to ask from my teacher/s... So, a couple of times for a couple of weeks I had to go to this 'language clinic' and practise pronouncing K, P and T, holding up my palm in front of my mouth: 'FEEL the stream of air - K! FEEL the stream of air - P! FEEL the stream of air - T!'

Stupid adults - that's how I felt at the time, and that's how I still feel. Worst of all, they (the adults) made me feel that I was 'different' and not 'as good as' the other kids. Oh - and I recently found out that my parents had no idea about the 'language clinic'. Obviously the teacher/s never bothered telling them!

Who we are as adults, depends to a large extent on how we were treated as children.

If fellow kids, and adults respected you when you are young and you are popular, then i believe that you will maintain a fairly large ego, and self esteem for life. You will be a confident and probably successful person.

If on the other hand you were treated poorly and bullied.. well the opposite applies i suppose

I fall somewhere between the two camps, though i could never have been described as 'popular' in school.

I don't really remember a great deal about how adults treated me i'm afraid....
Re-reading the above, i maybe think it is a very broad generalisation and there will be many, many exceptions, but hey it's just what i think

To be honest- school days feel like a completely different lifetime to me now, and when i remember things and people from school days, i don't really associate them with 'me' who i am now though i can see that the fact that i was largely ignored by my peers throughout school, has translated into me being a fairly shy(mostly!) adult who lacks a lot of confidence... though i do have my moments.

I do think what happened to you at the hands of adults, who, no doubt thought they were helping you, was not at all nice Wonder what current fads and trends in child education now, we will live to regret in future decades. Probably the current obsession with councelling kids to within an inch of their lives, whenever anything remotley bad happens to them, will be frowned upon by future generations.

Hey there's hope!

I was a hopeless child, I had very few friends and wasn't really socialable. But I've finally got self esteem now, and I find it relatively easy to make friends now. It only really happened when I was 22. In fact there are people who have been in my year group for five years, that I've only just become friends with.

Still it's worth it,

Well, a couple of years ago we had this school reunion thing (10 years since we parted) meeting people I spent (most of the time) 9 years together with... and I was a bit surprised, I must admit...

One of the guys who skipped school a lot and who got very sulky when he found out his family was moving to Norway during the... 7th or 8th year, I think - he had turned out just fine!

At dinner, he told me about working really hard to get his 'letter of mastership' within his line of occupation - and then he said, with a big grin: 'remember how I used to skip school? Well, my apprentices had better have a *very* good excuse if they turn up late!'

One of my classmates who had planned to become a is now an architect, and two years ago I saw her name in the papers, having won a very respected award among architects in Sweden together with a colleague - well done!

Another one of my classmates who was pretty bright is now a lawyer, but has somehow, along the way, developped a stutter...

And then there was the rotten egg - always a hopeless case and - 10 years later - still a hopeless case. Somebody said to him 'Hey! I heard you're a grandfather - is that true?'

And the answer was 'Hu-huh, hu-huh (sounding awfully like he did in his teens) yep, you know - I had a bun in the oven (Swedish slang for having made a girl pregnant) already when I was 15'

Did he have a job? Nope. Had he ever managed to get a job and keep it? Get a job, yes - keeping it, no. Was he living on welfare? Yep.

Some years before this reunion I was working in the front office of a hotel in my home town, and one of my former classmates walked in, asking me to call a cab for him - and he was too drunk to recognize me. Another one of the 'loosers' in my class, I'm afraid.

OK, so I turned out pretty much OK after those year at school - but sometimes I can't help thinking that my self confidence and self esteem would have been soo much better without the bullying...

Hello Titania (and Ripley).

I feel a bit rude, just dropping in like this, but I thought I'd at least say Hi.

What you say about your childhood reminds me of mine - that's why I'm typing all this. I had a bad time at school, especially primary school, and all because of a (slight) accent. You see, my mother's Estonian, and of coure I learned English from her and picked up her accent... P and B, G and K, T and D - yes, I had problems with these in English for years. (Apparently I still do, when I've had enough vodka.) But the accent did cause trouble. At the school I went to in the 1970s, there was one Greek family, one Vietnamese family, and my sister and I - and everyone else was English or Welsh. The majority was very nasty sometimes. I think the English kids thought the Empire still existed - but the joke was on them as my father's family (Turkish/Jewish/Danish/German) has been here (Australia) since 1838, and most of these English kids had only just arrived here...

Anyway - yes. I had my share of bullying. My sister escaped most of it, but the boys were merciless to me.

I still feel the effects of school; sometimes at work I feel out of place and in a minority again. I turned out OK, but I do wish school had been kinder to me.

I also wish I could still speak Estonian. It's too late for me to learn it again now; I can't pronounce the vowels properly - especially not 'O' with ~ above it...

Woolfcub.

Hi Wolfcub, nice meeting you!

It's OK - all conversations at h2g2 are after all public and can be read by anyone, and I appreciate that you post in accordance with the topic in question.

Sorry to hear that you've had similar experiences - sometimes I can't help but thinking that maybe my self-confidence would be better without all that bullying...

h2g2 is a site with lots of friendly researchers, and despite my Swedish accent somethings showing through when I write something, no one has ever complained about it. In fact, they probably think it's quite charming...

I see that you joined pretty recently - I hope that you have enjoyed yourself so far?

Hello again.

Yes, I've been having fun so far. Haven't been in very often over the last few days, and I really should meet more people in here, but there's certainly lots of interesting reading in h2g2... But now I'm off to read something dull from my office. It has to be done, and I've avoided it so far...

I'll drop in again one day...

Woolfcub.

Woolfcub,
maybe you can find help with Estonian or other languages at A1145477 The Language Thing.
There is a native Estonian (Hati) there.