The "aha!" moments:

• I didn't recognize that I had too much emotional stake in the game to perceive things objectively.
• There were no lurking demons or plots against me, just genetic misfortune and a broken healthcare system and well-meaning but ultimately unhelpful clinicians.
• There is nothing less unique than a teenage girl insisting that no one else in the entire world understands her.

But not too much aha. The "broken healthcare system" is still an attempt to put at least some of the blame on someone else. "If the healthcare system weren't broken, I'd be happy."

Notice I said "happy," not "fine." We tend to want to find outside causes for our internal unhappiness, for our own feelings of inadequacy. We blame others. Eleanor Roosevelt understood this, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

That our medical understanding is not yet advanced enough to diagnose and fix autism in the womb is not a sign that our healthcare system is "broken." We have "top people" working on that. "Top. People."

She should be happy she wasn't born a daughter of Sparta. They might have left her out to perish, or if her condition didn't become obvious until later, shipped her off to a temple were her behavior could be observed and interpreted as emanations from the gods.

Timing is everything.

Semi-relevant FBOFW strip today:

https://www.gocomics.com/forbetterorforworse/2020/10/23

Overall, I'd say it's a good strip. (The previous strip had preteen Liz telling her teacher, Miss Edwards, that the kids were calling Liz mean names because of her invisible dental appliance, which makes her lisp, big-time.)

But even so, I'd say a few negative comments underneath make sense as well. Don't read them until you've read the strip.

Namely:

howtheduck about 10 hours ago
"And if you don’t like today’s strip’s message, then you have made the mistake of reading it and trying to understand it. I can assure you that no one who teased me when I was growing up was afraid of being different."

mjowens1985 about 3 hours ago
"Maybe it’s just me, but the first panel does not sound like an accurate explanation of any teasing I’ve ever heard of or experienced."

summerdog about 3 hours ago
"Nor me. Kids in this age group are just plain mean and self centered. The sentiment from her teacher is just fine and beautiful. But, it doesn’t really help her learn to cope with it, and she better learn, because life is hard."

In my experience it's not the people who are VERY different who get teased... no one wants to be the asshole who teases the disabled. It's the people who are KIND OF different.

NicoleK, that makes sense. It also means that Judy Blume's 1974 book, Blubber, isn't as dated as one might expect, before reading it. That is, it's made clear in the first chapter that Linda isn't really being bullied for being fat; she's being bullied for being weak in every respect, since there are three other students in her grade who are "ten times fatter."

(While I sympathize with those who don't want kids to read it, since it could easily become a how-to manual, it should still be mandatory reading for parents and teachers everywhere. The message is clear: do your job, or this is how kids will behave when you're not looking. Also, one critic accused the sullen 10-year-old narrator "bystander," Jill, of looking at the world through "lemon-colored glasses," but it only makes sense that Jill does, since the adults around her DON'T do their jobs and are just as self-centered and uncaring as she is! Why SHOULDN'T she have contempt for them - or even contempt for Linda, since Linda turns out to be morally weak as well, near the end? That's reality.)

I've always felt that the largest contributor to the bullying I received in grade school was my own mouth. It would have been nice if someone (like a teacher) had told me that the things that I talked about in a classroom setting were of interest only to me and that I would be subjected to endless teasing because of it. I would have preferred to have been told that I didn't need to be the first one to raise my hand to answer the teacher's question. I found out the hard way that I lacked the personality to overcome the initial dislike other students feel for those who are smarter.

I've always felt that the largest contributor to the bullying I received was that I fuckin' deserved it. For a certainly class of misunderstandings about the world, it's best to be disabused of one's presumptions as early as possible.

Lots of different reasons Fayd. I was younger by 1-2 years and thus smaller and less experienced while also outperforming academically. I got picked on because I was an easy target.

I have a cousin who was picked on by teachers all the time. He was a big baby, a big kid, and is now a big man. 6ft something and solid muscle. The teachers all thought he was a year or two older than he actually was. At 5 he looked almost 7. So they all thought he was retarded. In truth there is nothing wrong with his brain. But there is a lot of cognitive and coordination differences between most 5 year olds and 7 year olds.

I have a friend who got hassled a lot in his 20s. His girlfriend looked really young and he looked really old. And I mean really old for that age. At 18 he looked over 30. So random strangers would call him a cradle robber when in reality she was two years older than him.

At one time I felt sorry for myself but gradually during college I figured out that past events and disadvantages are like footprints at the beach--they wash away. Everything is choices. You can choose to be weepy and weak or work at being strong.
I have observed over the years people with disabilities who made something of themselves anyway: a blind person in law school. People in wheelchairs playing basketball. Consider Rick Moranis--short, nerdy looking but hilarious and made a great career in film. Danny DeVito--short, bald, ugly but richer than you. Most people have some sort of disadvantage in life. Even Bill Gates is not good at sports. The question is what do you do with what you have.

Fayd, my sympathies.

I didn't have to go through that myself, but maybe that's because most teachers - I hope - have the sense to call on students who DON'T have their hands up just as often as those who do. After all, that keeps the lazy or slow students on their toes, and it also tells the smart students, indirectly: "yes, we all know you're smart, but others deserve to have a voice too, even if they're still struggling to get the details right."

But, one COULD argue that it's a good idea for a smart middle-school student, once his/her status is well known, to raise a hand only when at least a quarter of the other students' hands are up. After all, if you're the smartest kid in class and nobody else can answer a certain question, chances are the teacher will call on you anyway - and the other students are less likely to think you're showing off.

Even so, it's still mean and unfair when you do behave modestly, like that, and resentful, lazy students accuse you of being a know-it-all anyway. As this fascinating piece (and the comments) points out, there's a big difference between a "know-it-all" and a "want-to-know-it-all."

https://rainforestmind.wordpress.com/2016/03/31/are-you-a-know-it-all/

I just wish the blogger didn't use the term "rainforest"...

Anyway, here are a couple of good comments:

willskde
April 1, 2016 at 6:34 am
Definitely yes to the part about not raising my hand, for fear of the other kids thinking I’m making them look bad. And yes to staring out the window. And a big THANK YOU to the teacher in 4th grade who sat me near a bookshelf and ignored me when I slithered over to grab a book and ‘secretly’ read when I finished my work early. I read The Pearl little by little, thanks to her.
On another note, I once had an ex, years later, say to me, “One thing I couldn’t stand is that you always had to be right!” … “huh? me? I’m not like that, am I?” … “No, I don’t mean you argued about proving yourself right, I mean you were actually always right. Even when you were quiet and barely said anything, it was always right!” ugh. LOL.

Freya
April 1, 2016
Thank you for this article, and for your whole wonderful blog! School — yecchh. I was a socially isolated “brain”, desperate to start college when I was still in elementary school. One day my sixth grade teacher said something about the larynx, and he pronounced it “lar – nix”. I immediately told him what the right pronunciation was, because I assumed he’d be interested, and I was all excited about speech, phonetics, and linguistics. For the rest of that school year, my teacher would look at me every now and then in the middle of a lesson and say mockingly, “Did I pronounce that word right, Freya?"

And, from 2003:

Dear Miss Manners: I am not a know-it-all and don't monopolize conversations, but I do contribute some factual knowledge in areas that interest me. Numerous times, I've heard, "How come you know so much?"

It has crossed my mind to say, "Was I supposed to get permission?" or "One who doesn't spend one's time riding one's bike in circles tends to pick up a few things." But I'm confident that Miss Manners can suggest a reply that, while not accommodating an apparently peeved attitude, might facilitate social peace.

Gentle Reader: Try "I like to listen to people who know more than I do." Miss Manners suggests following this with a pleasant smile and then a long pause.

And...finally! UExpress is allowing access to the comments again! (Unless the problem lay elsewhere.)

It's Miss Manners' recent column on "mansplaining."

https://www.uexpress.com/miss-manners/2020/9/19/0/these-young-men-at-work-keep

Top comments:

Fencie:
Sometimes the tone of your voice will carry better than the words being said. I've countered computer mansplaining from young pups with a friendly "I bought my first computer in 1984, but I could use your help on this other matter. ..." Once I had to work with a nice guy who had trained me years earlier, and immediately he took over the mentor role. I finally had to interrupt and tell him he had trained me so well that I didn't need his help anymore, and everything was fine after that. For sure you don't want to come off as a know-it-all since you can learn from co-workers regardless of age.

Padraighin
a month ago
I generally assume that the kids know much more about tech than I do, since they're born into it and I'm an immigrant. They mostly do, but in a funny way. They take for granted that everyone plays video games or watches YouTube, but they might not know how to create a folder in their Google Drives. So we learn from each other as much as possible, and they love being the ones who can teach me.

Manatee
a month ago
Good reminder that sometimes a little patience can be helpful. But it should have limits. (I've had computers since 1982, so we're both old-timers.)

Matty Welch
a month ago
I'm a woman, and I was playing Hunt The Wumous, and Star Trek on a teletype machine back in 1977. I'm semi-retired, mostly because I couldn't take being in an office of young chickies talking down to me when I had decades more experience than them, mostly in high-tech. I didn't have problems with men in later years, it was mostly the women that I had problems with! I don't think I could ever go back to the office without belting somebody. Bu-bye arrogant pr#k Millennials and Gen Z.

JJJBB fencie
a month ago
There's a difference between learning new stuff from coworkers and men explaining your job to you as if they had decades more experience. Notice it's mostly younger, insecure men who are trying to climb the corporate ladder. They brag about their minimal accomplishments to get attention from the bosses who tend to like take-charge posturing.

And:

The Jaundiced Eye
This letter sounds like the ramblings of a deluded person who lives in a fantasy world, and who doesn't even know how bizarre she sounds. I don't even know if she knows what an entrepreneur is, it sounds like she is working in a regular old corporate office setting. If so she is lucky to have any job at all. She must be totally insufferable and incompetent to work with, and no wonder it feels like people are talking down to her.

CeeEmZee
Working at a tech company on a contract basis.

sarc
That explains it. I was wondering why an entrepreneur had coworkers.

JC77
My guess is she is a freelancer and these are her client's employees. A lot of people think being a freelancer means being your own boss. I am a freelancer; it more or less means my clients and all their employees are my boss, because if you repeatedly have problems with the employees, the client will let you go, not the employees.

And:

stupid-reader-says-what
a month ago
Tech requires giant egos nobody who doesn't have them can survive in it. Those of us who survive in it for a long time just get really good at hiding the egos but they are absolutely there. Nobody who doesn't think they are God's gift to tech would have the fortitude to push through something like a crashed server that 500 people have countless hours of work saved on and that the entire company's continued profitability depends on getting back online. I've been 1 wrong keystroke away from wiping out companies and I've known it at the time.
She has what it takes. She just isn't secure in the knowledge that she has what it takes. Once she is secure she will be easier to work with.

JustGoestoShow
I am not sure what she does as a tech entrepreneur but my own anecdotal experience in different jobs surrounding mechanics first on planes then on a manufacturing line is that those who come in new acting like they know everything and have a lot of bravado did not do as well as those like myself that were respectful of those already on the job and learning how things were done there. Even moving to other manufacturing lines you have to be respectful and willing to learn because the basics may be the same but there are a lot of differences. Once you got a majority of the stuff down then you can start arguing with people. I put male supervisors in their place more than once when they told me I did something wrong and I when I explained why I was right and I would go get the paperwork to prove it they backed down. My best way of doing this is asking them to show me so I can learn for the future and then tearing it apart bit by bit as I explain why what they were showing me was incorrect. Working in a male dominated field I only ran into a handful that treated me condescendingly. Most were great to work with and we learned a lot from each other.