School Days
Disclaimer: Still don't own it yet...or ever sadly.
My life as a boy was private. I had a slight weight problem that made me the target of bullies at school so I tended to keep to myself. I was no good at any sports so I was bullied by the jocks as "the fat kid". I was good in classes so I was bullied as the nerd. There really was no place where I could avoid them except at home. My mother worried about me, always asking why I had no friends at school. My father barely noticed me because he was at work all day. Over the week ends he would always ask me the same questions about why I wasn't in any sports or clubs. When I told him I was no good he always gave me the same statement about how when he was my age he was in ever sports and clubs, yah, yah, yah. You probably have heard the same thing in your life also.
So I spent my weekdays dreading school, my week nights dreading my mothers moans about how worried she was that I had no friends, and spent my weekends dreading my father's complaints about me being so anti-social. Through most of my middle school life I lived that way until I reached the 6th grade and a new student moved in. His name was Robert and like me he hated sports. He didn't hate them because he was out of shape, like I was, but because he never understood them, he claimed. Actually he was surprisingly fit. I never would have visualized him as a person who hated sports, he seemed like the kind of person who could win at anything and not even try. Regardless of that he was also extremely smart. If he wasn't smarter than I was than he was a dame close second. As the two outcasts we soon became friends.
Life from 6th to 8th grade became increasingly easier to tolerate. I suddenly had a friend who I could bring home to show my mother so she stopped bothering me. Latter on Robert introduced me to many different activities like riddles, chess, and mazes that I soon joined every club that he was associated with or created and my father no longer cared since I found my notch. I became incredibly good at chess and riddles that Robert often joked that he wishes he never introduced me to the two things, but the mazes always did me in. I never became good with them. No matter now simple the maze was and how much help Robert would give me I could never finish them on my own.
For two years I enjoyed the company of Robert and then after 8th grade graduation I learned that Robert's parents were going to send him to a private high school. I was not as fortunate. I my parents saw no reason for me to go to a private school so I was sent to the local high school where my parents could keep an eye on me. Robert and I promised to keep in touch and as a parting gift he game me a wooden Labyrinth. You know one of those blocks with a maze cut out of it with the marble you have to navigate to the end using two axis knobs that tilt the top face in different ways! After he left I became the sole target of the bullies again but at least I had comfort in a maze when I came home.
