Jacksonville, Florida here, school from '88 - '01. Both public and private schools. I've been punched in the face and chest multiple times, spit on, thrown int

Jacksonville, Florida here, school from '88 - '01. Both public and private schools. I've been punched in the face and chest multiple times, spit on, thrown into a creek by three kids, pushed down stairs, you name it. But it was mostly constant emotional abuse. For how much I was called a faggot, you'd swear the WBC kids went to school with me. I can't even imagine how much worse it'd be if I actually were gay. Kids in the '90s were obsessed with anti-homosexuality. I'd usually ditch the cafeteria and eat alone in the stairwells. The worst parts of the day were between-classes. I took to just carrying all of my books with me all day so I could jump from class to class as quickly as possible. Well, that and gym. Gym was always a nightmare. It was at home where I received by far the worst physical abuse. But, I'm not looking for a pity party for myself here. I'm doing just fine today, and managed to cope with most of it. And to be fair, I really was a weird kid. The sock thing in the article caught my eye. I would have killed for socks without seams: I was always taking off my shoes and folding the edge of the sock because the seam would drive me nuts. I had all kinds of weird tics, many caused by actual (not trendy) obsessive-compulsive disorder, others by misophonia. I'd just really like to see people take bullying seriously instead of as a rite of passage. Imagine if you had a coworker call you a faggot and push you down the stairs at work. And so you told HR, and they told the coworker, "hey, don't do that again or we might make you work an extra hour!" and that was it. Yet somehow this is perfectly okay with children, because "kids will be kids."