Through the Eye's of a Spectrum Living With Autism

Chapter 8: A Decent Year in Middle School

Things were pretty brutal during my first year in middle school, with the bulling, and all, but like a lot of things in life, it all came to an end. During the summer I kept thinking of ways to improve for the best.

And no, I didn't do this so people would start to like me, but because I needed to learn how to behave myself in public, and learn to communicate. I looked up techniques on autism websites, as well as looking over Lori Ray's techniques she gave me. I would practice a little bit in front of my bathroom mirror by pretending to talk to another person, which I know sounds weird, but it was the only way I could practice, plus I did improve to not hesitate a lot when I talked.

Even today communication continues to be a problem for me. To this day, I cannot keep good eye contact with another person during conversations, I have a harder with using the right type of words when speaking, making what I say make absolutely no sense. And lastly, I still have a hard time reading emotions and body languages, meaning it's hard for me to tell if someone is happy, sad, or angry.

But if enough of this boring learning stuff, you came here for the story, I know I know I'm getting to that. So anyway, like I said about last year in middle school, I still tried to avoid everyone in school, just so I didn't have to worry about being made fun of.

So when arriving back in middle school I thought the same thing would happen like last year, but to my shock, things went pretty decent. Don't get me wrong, I still had some pretty crazy moments that year, but all and all I had more good times than bad.

One the coolest things I ever got to do was teach a group about math, despite the fact that I was still learning myself. I know crazy right, well here's a short story, I had probably one of the best math teacher in school, we will call her Miss J. Anyway, she taught me a lot of different ways to learn and solve math problems, as well as memorizing them.

As I mentioned a bunch of times in this story, I really loved to watch cartoons and miss J obviously saw this, she told me to take in math as though it were a cartoon. When I did this, I learnt things a lot faster and a lot quicker. I got such good grades on all my assignments, which to led to me teaching three others in my math class how to use my new technique. You see, there were four of us in the class that were in the same grade, but the others were a year behind us, I really don't know how that works.

I even had another exciting person added to my life, her name was Jenny, she was dating my dad at the time and decided to move in with me and my dad. She has to be the biggest influence in my life, cause if it wasn't for her, I'd probably be the biggest mess at this point of my life.

She got me back into shape, back on schedule, and she even helped with developing with my autism. However, I felt bad for her seeing she had down to El Paso just to be with us. She grew up in Illinois, and she was used to the weather being hot and cold, while down in El Paso, it was hot no matter what, and plus she probably missed home at that time.

And to add to the good parts of this year, my friend Gianfranco introduced me to some new friends that I could make. It was thanks to him I was able to meet new people and how to defend myself.

You see, a small problem we were having was that not only did the kids continue to pick on me, but they all started to aim towards Gianfranco. I felt a little bad, I felt as though I was bringing a lot of the heat towards him, but like a champ he just ran right through it all.

And as a bonus, he taught me how to defend myself if ever need be. So, I guess if it wasn't for him I would never had learned how to stand up for myself, so I owe a big time thanks for that.

But not all good things last forever, well, let me just clarify, this isn't something that ruined my whole school year, but it made see how Clarke Middle School was truly like, here's where the story begins.

I had just gotten out of my social studies class, and I was heading to the restroom before heading to class. As I was washing my hands, some little punk comes in the restroom and starts attacking me, and no he wasn't beating me up or anything, he just started shoving me all over the place. I got out of there and immediately asked my teacher if I could go to the principle's office to which he allowed.

I reported what happened to the vice-principle seeing as how the main principle was busy, and she told me she would bring the kid in and here his side story and bring me back in the next day. At first, I thought things were actually going to go my way, boy was I in for a rude awakening.

I was bought back in by the vice-principle, and she came to probably the dumbest conclusion on what happened to me. She apparently thought that I started what happened in the restroom, and that I was the one who possibly be the one harassing the kid. You wanna know how she thought of this? She showed me the school cameras, which showed me entering the restroom and then the kid entering afterwards, to which she asked me "Why would a kid just walk in and just start harassing you?" All I could think was, what is she thinking, why would start I start something?

I tried to prove my innocence's, but obviously this vice-principle wasn't too keen on listening and decided to give me SAC. That made my eyes shoot right out of my head, I was being put in detention for something I didn't do all because a security camera didn't capture what really happened. This got me so mad, that I immediately told Jenny and my dad.

They got involved and tried to get me out of SAC, but nothing happened, so I had no choice but to sit in the SAC room for something I didn't even do.

All I could think was "Thank goodness the year is almost over, then I will finally be don with middle school." And boy was graduating form middle school the best moment of my life. Being able to move to the next level was such an excitement for me, I would now be going to High school.

The bummer part of graduating was I didn't get to go to the high school I wanted to go to, which was Americas High School. You see, half way though my eighth grade year, we moved to small suburban area called Horizon City, making it impossible for me to attend Americas unless I got a transfer to the school that I lived nearby, which was Eastlake.

I didn't know what to pick, I could go to an entirely different school and possibly meet new people, or get transfer and stay close with my friends. I would only come to the decision when I got to Eastlake to speak to the principle.