4:59pm February 5, 2012

It amazes me how young children learn to hate.

My parents found this preschool for me that was better than any other school experience I ever had, in terms of learning. It was not at all the stereotype of Catholic school. They made sure it didn’t matter that I wasn’t toilet trained. The room was filled with activities, all of which involved learning, and with a few exceptions (which I, of course, figured out – like stimming on the chalk) you could do anything you wanted. They divided us into indoor groups and outdoor groups each day. But once they saw that I didn’t understand the restriction, they immediately and without fuss put me in both at once and pretty much let me do what I wanted as long as I wasn’t destroying anything. If schools have to exist they should work like that, rather than spoiling the inherent fun that exists in learning before it becomes regimented and bland and terrifying. My only good school memories come from there.

But.

The other kids.

Gah.

At first I just sort of drifted around and really didn’t pay anyone much attention.

Then I started discovering this weird phenomenon where I would try to go somewhere. Like climb up the webbed ropes. And get shoved violently out of there. I remember not even fully perceiving this as “kids”, just as these chaotic forces that grabbed me and threw me on the ground and made lots of noise while they were doing it. I’m not even sure I connected the hands and the sounds together. It was just scary. And it seemed like wherever I went the painful hands and the noise pushed me away.

One day I drifted into one of the lines the other kids were always making. They’d stand outside along the edges of the playground and shout things like “Whoever wants to play My Little Pony, line up!” And lines would form. I don’t remember how I got into the line, or what the game was supposed to be about. But then came the shoving again. And words this time: “Not YOU.”

There was one girl who joined in with activities I was doing (including unofficial “activities” like stimming). She is literally the only child I remember being nice to me in the slightest. I suspect the best that others managed was indifference. But I wouldn’t have noticed the indifferent ones because that was beyond my ability to perceive. I just noticed the bad ones – as an undifferentiated blur of bad sensations – and Katy, the nice one.

Shortly after Katy began hanging around me I was standing on the playground. Another girl approached, holding Katy by the shoulders in front of her. She gave Katy a little shove and Katy walked up to me. The girl said “Say I don’t like you, Katy.” Katy repeated the words in an almost robotic voice. “I – don’t – like – you.” I never saw her again.

When I was 18, my mother told me that the preschool had called them, very concerned about this high-pitched shrieking sound I made. My parents were confused. I’d never made such noises at home. The nuns told her, “She plays by herself all the time, like nobody even exists to her, and if any child approaches, she shrieks at the top of her lungs.”

I believe my mother but I don’t remember doing it. The thing is, I was detached from my physical existence back then. It’s hard to describe. It’s like my body had its own instinctual reactions to things, which probably included shrieking. But I was unaware of it. I had no conception of how I looked or sounded from the outside, or even that there was such a thing. I often did things, like where I walked, that kind of thing, with no conscious awareness or intent So I could very well scream with no awareness that I was doing it. Just as the echoed words that popped out of my mouth felt like they were detached from me, coming from elsewhere if I noticed them at all – I never felt my mouth moving or anything.

My mother came to visit the school to observe what was happening. Apparently I was wiggling my fingers a lot. She wiggled her fingers back. I apparently enjoyed this.

But how is it that three and four year olds could pick out a person who is different and hate them like that?

Maybe it’s just that the level of awareness I remember having is so far removed from what I observe in people of the same age, and hear from people who remember that age. My parents wrote me their autobiographies as a birthday present one year (best present ever – it’s like they gave me themselves). And I’m amazed by how my mother perceived her surroundings and people at that age. She was so aware, so sensitive, to others so present in a way that I wasn’t. I know that my receptive language delays and my agnosia-like sensory world changed things for me, but the amazement at what little kids figure out at those ages is still intense. And yes, there were things that came easier for me than for them too, but I was oblivious to such comparisons and to my own talents as well.

It’s like there were these gaps in my perception of the world. I notice these gaps only as they get filled. They are huge, enormous gaps that you could drive a truck through. They’re things other people seem to be born knowing, or pick up by toddlerhood, that I only figured out at ages like 7, 13, 20, 30, and probably beyond. They’re not just social things, they’re often basic understandings of how the world around us works. And I always think I know so much now, and later learn that in many ways I’m still drifting around obliviously just like I did on the playground in preschool. I guess it’s that thing where when you’re truly incompetent you overestimate your abilities.

And people penalize me for it. Still. They analyze my behavior, at various times in my life, as if I knew the things people seem born knowing or learn early. I was doing make-believe stuff in my teens that I’d never done before – and most people go through that stage as toddlers. If I’d had the average teen’s understanding of the world, then a lot of dreadful misunderstandings would never have occurred. But I didn’t. I probably still don’t, even though I’m learning.

I’m told by one of my friends that these gaps are not always bad things. I have a tendency to look upon myself as dumb for not knowing this stuff. But sometimes I guess if I’d known the stuff, I wouldn’t have been able to know other things that are also important. I wonder.

Either way, the world still seems, as that friend described to me a couple days ago, as if there’s so much information I’m taking in that I’ll never understand it. Sometimes I can’t seem to perceive the world at all, things get so backlogged. Everything vanishes and there’s just existing.

But even most of the time, I’m getting so much information that comprehension is a huge struggle. It’s a tradeoff and lots of things get cut out. Which is probably why I have such huge gaps despite having areas of extreme talent. This is doubtless why they described me in my initial diagnosis as having “idiot savant qualities”. Believe me, whatever anyone else may have thought or said, I always believed the “idiot” part most of all. My talents were invisible to me. I still struggle to see myself as capable.

I did eventually learn self-hate. And by extension, hate of anyone who resembled me too closely. I also learned that I could get a notch better treatment if I bullied others. I believe this only happened a handful of times, and not severely, but I’m still deeply ashamed that I stooped to such levels, even a little. And I’ve treated people badly for a variety of other bad reasons. Like finally being in a position of social power, not knowing how I affected people, and really hurting people as a consequence. All this to say, I’m not claiming to be some kind of saint(*). Not by a long shot.

And yet.

Even though I’ve hurt people in the ways I described above.

I never learned to size up people for difference on sight and treat them worse than dirt as a consequence. I don’t even think I could if I tried.

I’m 31. These kids knew it by age 3 to 4, maybe even younger. Maybe there are gaps in my knowledge that aren’t bad after all. It’s weird how I can be at the same time amazed by the level of comprehension required to do such a thing so young, and yet repulsed at the results.

Because these children ensured that my first big experience of other kids was the experience of being hated. I may not have understood the particulars of my environment, but I felt the hate nonetheless. They, along with lots of people to come, helped teach me that the world was a cruel and unpredictably hostile place, with no apparent places of safety. Where bad things happened randomly for no reason and no possibility of avoiding them. I believe I was already heading cognitively in the direction of being rarely able to understand that you could anticipate and avoid abuse. That was another big gap in my knowledge that took ages to cross. But these experiences certainly helped cement the idea that there truly was no way to hide.

I know that not all children learn to hate people different from them, and not all learn that young. But a shocking number do learn. I have never believed in the innocence of childhood. That’s not what shocks me. It’s the complexity of what they have to know and understand in order to carry out such hate. And the amount of damage that tiny little kids can do to each other. It’s scary.

.

(*) Never, ever believe someone who tells you of a class of people who are innocent little angels who could never hurt anyone. That always leads to damage. Always.

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