At 10:39 PM 12/19/02 -0600, you wrote:
 >Part of Reid's problem is, hanging around adults, he doesn't have to 
jockey for a place in the Order.
 >I'm sure he's sending bizarre signals to the other kids -- a> being from 
another state (there's REALLY
 >a difference;

Oh, bless his heart.  (((==hugs==)))  Hey, I was a misfit, and I'm *from* 
here, so. . . . (O'course, the trouble at that time was that Dallas was 
under invasion by Yankees coming down here during the economic booooom of 
the 1970s, and thus I was in the minority.  They insisted *I* had an 
accent.  Can you imagine!?  Plus, they didn't want to be here, for the most 
part.  And so the circumstances may change, but the bullies are forever.)

Um.  As much as I love Austin and desire to live thereabouts, I also 
realize that it's not as cosmopolitan as Dallas and the metro area 
surrounding it.  In Dallas, you get the feeling of being in any large city 
anywhere.  Going south and west (Fort Worth--where the West begins), you 
start encountering people who actually *do* wear cowboy boots and even 
Stetson hats.  Wrangler jeans and the flannel shirt.  Mustaches that look 
like they ought to have straw in them.  Ahem . . . redneck country, 
ma'am.  (Notice they call you "Ma'am" and are extremely polite and 
soft-spoken, despite being large or rangy and looking down at you, the city 
midget.)  And, of course, the piped-in music in restaurants and stores 
begins to be shit-kicker, er, I mean, "country."  "Young
country," not just 
the old good stuff like Willie Nelson (now, I'm not telling you I listen to 
him all the time,either, but after all, the red-headed stranger was the man 
selected to sing the nat'l anthem in that nationally televised celebrity 
program to honor the 9/11 victims, remember?  So he's therefore the most 
accepted singer across the board, using my twisted logic) and Patsy Cline 
(ever great) and even Roger Miller.  Um.  Anyhow, they play that stuff and 
Texas roadhouse (Joe Ely) in the dining establishments, and it can really 
get on one's nerves.  (This is not the practice in Dallas/Richardson.  We 
have pop, hip-hop, jazz, and what-have-you on the airwaves most of the 
time.  However, get into a small town, and you're gonna hear Clint Black 
and Trent whatshisname.)

These factors could result in a non-Texan having a long adjustment 
period.  Even without the adolescent angst that's soon to start (eep).

Guess I sorta neglected to mention that when talking about our great state 
of Texas.  Sorry about that, chief.

I'm thinking of solutions, but not coming up with any. ("I'm tryin' to 
think, but nothin' happens.")  Mostly it's because the only thing I know is 
that parents shouldn't get involved until it really looks like there's a 
dangerous situation brewing, such as "Just wait until after school and I'm 
going to kick your a*&#."  You know why--because the teacher or parent 
intervening can backfire.  Or your child can be labeled "tied to the apron 
strings" or whatever.  For some reason, it is thought by your peers to be a 
sign of weirdness to like or respect your parents from when you're about 
thirteen up until you're about twenty-five.  Don't know why that has to be 
the case, but it does seem to be.  It's really tough to sit by and watch 
problems continue, though.  maybe a party is the answer--a party at the 
martial arts place?  A January fiesta with a pinata and so forth, a 
"welcome to Texas" bash for the class?  I don't know.

In eighth grade, I spent about four months being tormented by girls, 
chiefly led by a pair of evil twins (both were wicked.)  I must have been 
in an awkward phase or I did something to cross them.  Don't know to this 
day what started it.  Mama used to recommend that I ignore the 
insults.  That didn't work, because they would get crazy when it seemed I 
didn't hear or was too busy to react to whatever it was they were 
pulling.  They would literally get up in my face, their nasty breath 
choking me, and YELL whatever insult of the day they were into.  They would 
MAKE you hear it.  Then her advice was to be funny, play along and agree, 
and make it into a fun and witty thing that would win them over.  This did 
not work, possibly because wit flew over their heads like a gaggle of 
vultures over the Painted Desert and was not registered on the screen.  If 
I acknowledged their taunts, for example, "So you belly dance, as fat as 
you are?!"  (It had become known that I attended beledi classes at the 
civic center with my friend and her mother--Middle Eastern dance being 
quite interesting and fun--and I was a size 12 at the time, obviously too 
fat to walk down the Safeway aisle.)  "Let's see you shimmy!"  Well, you 
might imagine what chaos resulted when I smiled and said, "Oh, would you 
like to learn?  Of course."  And actually shimmied.    The
mob in the 
hall knocked me (and my friend) up against the lockers, and the gym teacher 
intervened because she could see we were going to get crushed and 
suffocated.  (People were crowding in to see the "fight," I think.)  She 
then blamed *ME* for making a spectacle of myself and marched me off to the 
counselor's office.  Mama's well-intentioned 1950s-mindset advice had once 
again bombed in the 1970s.   . . . I guess what I'm saying is that 
any solutions WE come up with will be lacking, mostly because our 
perspective is skewed.  What might have worked in our day (when guns in 
school were not even imagined, and violence was mostly just the occasional 
fistfight or breaking of windows, followed by Coach paddling people at 
assembly) probably would not work for him.  And logic is not likely to work.

Or maybe, since I never found a solution other than living through it until 
someone else caught their attention and began to be the target, I am not 
the one to ask.  (Yes, after about three months of daily problems, I was 
rescued by the arrival of a really homely and really sensitive creature who 
wore a Chubbies size and swoopy-templed eyeglasses.  It shames me to admit 
that this was a great relief to me.  I looked on with sympathy and 
disapproval, and I offered her a place at our lunch table, but I did not 
intervene when the crazy girls started picking on her full force about her 
second day at school.  I figured, why get both of us attacked?  As for 
lunch, I didn't get to know her any better because she didn't accept my 
invitation; I suppose by then she was suspicious of all overtures of 
friendship.  She was the bullies' target for most of the rest of the year, 
until someone else did something to swap places with her. . . poor kid was 
named Herbie Roach, and that was only the *first* reason they found to pick 
on him.  ("It's the human roach.  . . Herbie the Love Bug. . . "  Etc.)

Sigh.  Human nature isn't too civilized, is it?  Until we're socialized, we 
can be horrible.  Anyhow, what this means to me is that such torture is 
usually limited in duration.  They will tire of whoever is their current 
whipping boy and will turn to a new one.  We can only pray that it happens 
sooner rather than later.

If you can hang on and survive it, it will stop.  Maybe that's an awfully 
dark and not very reassuring position, but that's sort of the way I see it.

 >b> not being used to other kids particularly; c>being the lone cub he is, 
in a tradition of lone cubs....

Yeah, that was MY problem.  I'd been brought up among adults as an only 
child and was precocious.  I always had a circle of friends, but they were 
the other "brains" and weirdos or alternative people;  sometimes our group 
accepted the "outcasts" as well.  Think the gifted class in
"Malcolm in the 
Middle," sort of.  I mean, if the outcasts approached us and were getting 
beaten up for trying to sit elsewhere in the cafeteria, they could take 
refuge among us anytime with no questions asked.  But we were not just 
"fellow rejects," but had self-selected for similar interests (the kind 
smart kids have--at the time, computers, ham radio, reading, math, chess, 
science fiction, writing, dramatics, D&D or SCA, etc.) rather than hanging 
out with people who dressed like us.  This was a tough concept for many 
clique-huggers, who couldn't understand why we didn't want to be part of 
the Fashion Club and its insecurities, or cheer with the Pep Club at those 
interminable rallies, or do the school dances and stuff like that, or 
(worst of all ) go out to the lake.  The entertainment at the lake was 
nothing more than lying around on towels making out, boozing, taking drugs, 
smoking, and pulling stunts such as driving an old car over a campfire and 
accidentally setting the car on fire and requiring the combined efforts of 
two volunteer fire departments to put the blaze out.  Boring, plus idiotic.

They didn't see it that way.  Furthermore, others who didn't see it their 
way but were their age were under attack, because they didn't adhere to 
those values . . .implicitly questioning those values, which threatened 
these group animals known as cliques.  So it has always been a problem to 
NOT want to be just like everyone else, simply because it angers Everyone Else.

However, when you do find those other people who share your interests, it 
makes everything bearable.  You can stick together and you'll have 
fun--more fun than the others, who are deranged by hormones (or a combo of 
hormones and stupidity.)  So wait for it, and Reid will probably soon bring 
home some other compatible types.  If they're the wounded sparrows (I 
tended to bring 'em home, and Mama would just sigh and sigh, but she'd 
bring out the cookies and Scrabble and listen to their tales of woe or 
divorce, which was still a big issue then), that's OK.  Wounded sparrows 
sometimes heal under your wing, and their songs are always more interesting.

I'll send positive vibes and hope that he soon finds a friend or two who 
can really relate so they can be buddies.  I also agree that the martial 
arts are not a bad hobby and can come in handy when fights break out. . . .
- - - -
Nine out of ten doctors recommend reading my books.  The tenth is a quack.
Shalanna Collins                                          shalanna{at}attbi.com
_Dulcinea: or Wizardry A-Flute_ by Shalanna Collins (e-mail me for excerpt)
ISBN 0-7388-5388-7 trade paperback  http://home.attbi.com/~shalanna/>

--- Rachel's Little NET2FIDO Gate v 0.9.9.8 Alpha