The Opposite of Normal by Andrew Boggan (ereader for comics txt) 📖

like everyone else in this world, I’d like a friend too that I can connect with, but other 14 year olds appear to be existing in an entirely different world. How come I’m living in a separate world?

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It was time for the next class. Health & Physical Education. Anything that related to sport had totally lost of interest. We all stood in the middle of the school oval with the entire class gathered in a small crowd. I quietly stood on the outside of the crowd ensuring the distance was kept between me and everyone else in the class. Mr. Harrison was getting the class ready to play a few rounds of soccer. I stood on the side line of the crowd trying to slow down a racing heartbeat. I could feel panic set in and I began playing with hands looking up at the clear blue sky. Once again, attempting to focus my attention elsewhere during a state of anxiety. Mr. Harrison’s aim was for everyone to join up in groups of 3, throw a soccer ball in the air and for somebody to catch the ball and kick it back to their to the other members in the group.

Everybody disbursed into their groups of 3 and I was left standing on my own. This came to no surprise because I used to being left out and in a way I preferred too but Mr. Harrison assigned me to 2 other guys in the group. As it turns out they weren’t the easiest of guys to get along with. Stephen obviously came from a rough background and enjoyed playing rugby with an extreme level of tackle and Colin often loved imitating his favorite boxer. Stephen kicked the soccer ball into the air with such force the ball went at least a mile high into the air and Colin quickly dashed off down the school oval to catch the ball. Colin put such force behind his leg to kick the ball that it went flying back to Stephen and vice versa. Alone I stood watching the ball bounce back and forth whilst playing with my hands. Stephen grunted “Brendan” and raised the ball with both hands over his head shot the ball down the oval. It was my turn to catch the ball and had to show these guys I was actually worth something when it came to performing. So I sped off like lightning down to the other end of the oval to catch the ball. Whilst running at the speed of the light I could hear a crowd laughing but I just assumed they were laughing at other people.

I eventually caught up with the ball and stopped it from going any further. I had to look around for Stephen and Colin so I could kick the ball back to them but they had disappeared and I discovered what all the laughter was about.

It must have looked like I was standing on a theatre stage presenting stand-up comedy. One side of the oval there was me and at the other end there was the entire class pointing and laughing, some other kids even crossed their arms over their stomachs in fits of laughter. The joke had been how I was running to get the soccer ball.

When normal people run they bend their elbows in the form of a jogger and hold their heads up high breathing in the air to keep them going pushing all force into the legs. I ran in a way that came only natural to me. I pushed all force into my legs to give me my running strength and ran with my arms stretched out as wide as they would go occasionally skipping steps rather than running. I probably looked as if I was running to hug somebody. However my classmates found this utterly amusing and they enjoyed a comic relief at my expense whilst I stood on a podium of vulnerability trying to mentally process what just happened. My eyes couldn’t stay focused, they kept on shifting from side to side and without realizing it, I dropped the ball to quickly play with my hands. The panic felt like a thousand needles stinging my face and the sweat that I had worked up felt like a bucket of ice was thrown all over me. I wasn’t able to stop trembling or stop playing with my hands. The school bell rang for the next class and it was time to leave, had the bell not rang for the next class I’m not sure how long I would have been frozen standing in the one spot. The other classmates calmed down and hurried off to class and I slowly picked up the ball, paced myself with my head hanging low and slowly walked up to get my bag.

I didn’t feel as if I wanted to cry this time, so many things went through my head at that time, that there really weren’t any words to describe it. In a way I was kind of used to being laughed at, I guess this came from recent swimming carnivals, but I enjoyed swimming too much to let their laughter bother me. Although I was not one to enjoy a game of sport, what mattered the most to me was being able to kick and catch a ball the same way as everyone else.

Several times I watched Colin and Stephen rush to catch the ball and kick it, I focused my energy on watching how they kicked and ran for the ball, ever so hard attempting to act how they do and try to fit it. From several observations it looked easy and I thought if I could put into practice their movements then I would look the same when I go to catch and kick the ball; however this was not to be. When I ran to get the ball something had full control over my body to present an obscure posture, and although I couldn’t control it, I certainly wasn’t aware of how I looked. The entire time of running to get the ball I honestly thought I looked just like them, normal. But I wasn’t, and some greater force made me look foolish and I was completely powerless to stop it.

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Ms Allen was a great Modern History teacher. Every time she walked into the classroom she graced the room with such presence and certainly made Modern History an enjoyable subject. Her abilities as a teacher to work well with a diverse range of teachers made it easy for everybody to maintain interest in the classroom. Modern History is a particularly favorite subject of mine as it deals with so many events in history that seems to spark my interest.

I never really presented a high IQ in most of my subjects at school but for some reason or another, I excelled at Modern History. In the first part of the school year my brain was able to read a summary of events about a particular issue we would study in class and it would stay in memory. Without attempt, I read the 5 year leap program in China based from Mau Si Tong and the series of events seemed to stick in my brain like glue. Naturally, being able to so rapidly absorb this information worked in my favor when it came to exam time.

I was still very much alone in the classroom but I didn’t care, I had access to a wealth of knowledge to learn from that whatever my classmates thought of me at this time, I simply didn’t care.

The end of the school semester was fast approaching and Ms Allen offered everyone a chance to study their own area of interest that related to Modern History. I decided to focus on the life and times of the Victorian/Edwardian British Royal Family ruling over the British Empire – The land where the sun never sets.

What an opportunity this was for me, not only did I want to learn more about this area of interest but I already had developed a high level of fascination with this topic and often when I sat in the library alone at lunch to read, I would hunt down any book I could find relating to the British Empire at the turn of the 20th century.

So much had I already learnt about this, that I could talk for at least 3 to 4 hours on this topic alone. I was able within 5 to 10 minutes draw a complete family tree of Kind Edward VI and Queen Alexandra outlining every single family connection the British Empire had to other crowned heads of Europe. My brain held such fine detail from dates of birth to dates and causes of death, dates of coronations, scandals and world turning events that impacted the royal family and lead up to the disintegration of the British Empire. I had one aim with my area of topic for Modern History, and that was to prove to my other classmates I wasn’t as dumb as what they thought I was. I truly believed that I was somebody of importance and this was the perfect opportunity to present my importance to other people.

Across a 6 week period I spent every single lunch break sitting in the library hunting down every book I could find on the British royal family and trying to piece as much information together as possible. My mind never worked out what I wanted to say on my essay, my fingers always did the work for me. Id go hunting for the materials and my hands did all the work, I always imagined that I had tiny brains in the end of my finger tips and that my knowledge came from there and not the brain in my head because my fingers always seemed to work harder than my brain when it came to writing about the British royal family.

It was now about 3 weeks before the essays on our chosen topics were due. Ms Allen went around the class and asked the other students to say what they were choosing to write about. There was a wide variety of different topics people were writing about. Some students chose the Vietnam War, others chose World War 2 and another student even chose the American Civil War. Eventually it was my turn to speak. In a very soft mono-tone I replied “The British Royal Family at the turn of the 20th century” A number of students raised their eyebrows at me and others tried holding back from laughter, I didn’t know how to react but begin vigorously playing with my hands and look at everyone’s reactions around me. Before the panic attacks could set it, Ms Allen said “Oh my goodness that’s fantastic” and a deafening silence filled the classroom. Ms Allen appeared to be really impressed, and I had her encouragement to continue with the topic so I guess it didn’t really matter what the other students thought of me, but in a way I couldn’t help it.

For the last 3 weeks I worked solidly during my lunch break and on my weekends researching, reading, writing and drawing timelines and diagrams to present with my essay, I sure made use of this opportunity to pull out every fine detail out of my brain and present it on paper.

My grades at school certainly varied from subject to subject. I was placed in the lowest level of Mathematics for starters, and I just couldn’t seem to grasp basic mathematical concepts, whenever the maths teacher went on about algebra, fractions, percentages and long division my attention span would snap and I couldn’t concentrate, it was as