Social Deprivation: Where I am now

Social Deprivation: Where I am Now

            What is there not to enjoy about the teenage experience? Teenagers receive the opportunity to explore their individuality. They join a multitude of different clubs, clicks, ensembles, and sports. It is at this point in life where teenagers begin to find out what they like and what they do not like. Teens begin puberty and experience different hormonal changes. They gain intelligence and begin to experiment sexually. Teens gain the ability to define their image, their role; maybe even meet the love of their life. Most push curfews and rebel against families in order to learn objectively. Teens learn about gender roles and stereotypes and how those issues affect them on a daily basis. Racism and prejudice issues are presented to teens more often. World issues are also presented to teens provoking critical thinking and opinions. From an educator’s perspective, the main goal is to educate the students well enough to prepare them for college and the real world. This defining period in every one’s life give the prime opportunity to discover. Teenagers are given the opportunity to indulge themselves in topics that interest them and are pushed to understand real world economics and the state of the nation they live in. I have discovered about people’s high school experiences while conversing with friends. High school has a love-hate relationship with most graduates. Most students never wish to leave because of their love for high school, or never wish to return. So what happens when a person misses all of the social experiences? How does that person catch up in life? How does that person experience those experiences that were missed in high school?

            My name is Evan Cherchiglia and I was alone throughout my teenage years. Yet, I still am standing today as a proud Caucasian male that supports equality and humanity. Throughout the course of this paper I will discuss how my lack of social high school experiences and how that defines me as a human today. Allow me to start out by explaining that I did go to Shaker Heights High School. I had a high school experience, just once that lacked social experience. I had a family, a loving one that cares. They took care of me and did everything in their power to give me a positive experience.

            My story begins while I was playing little league baseball, I remember my dad being my coach. I was eight years old and was on a team called the “Seadogs”. We were not a very good team, but we played for the sport of the game. I met a kid on the team named Oliver. Oliver was always annoying and he really believed he was better than me. I never was a fan of Oliver, but my dad used to bring me over to his house after our games a lot. Oliver and I would play basketball with his friends, where he used me as a pawn to make him look good in front of his friends. I didn’t realize this at the time, but my dad took me to Oliver’s house because my dad was cheating with my mom. This was the start of a downward spiral that changed my life forever.

            While I was eight and nine years old, I was in elementary school I was in good physical condition for kid my age and I had a lot of friends, so I thought. During this period of my life I was in the third and fourth grade, I was hyperactive and still thought fart jokes were funny. I was a little overly hyper, where some of my friends thought I was becoming weird. I was just extremely immature. I would come home from school and I would either immediately be told to do my homework, then I was allowed to watch television and play outside. I was always good with math. My friend Steven, who was my next door neighbor, would always ask me to assist him with his homework. Steven was a grade above me. So I would help him out with mathematics that was supposed to be a grade above my skill level. I later found out that Steven used me for my intelligence. When we “played” together I would always be put in uncomfortable positions. When we played street hockey, I was the goalie. They would take slap shots at close range, telling me in a euphemized manner that they were, “building my endurance and that this would make me stronger.”

I never complained or realized what was actually happening until one time my brother saw how Steven and his friends were treating me. I remember this day vividly. My brother, Brian, was with his friends playing basketball in my back yard while Steve, his friends, and I were playing in his back yard. Brian saw what was going on and he came over and protected me. Brian would put Steven in goal and do to Steven what he was doing to me. Brian would take slap shots at him from close range. This turned into a big deal within my family and Steven’s family when Steven told on my brother.

You would think that play like this between children is normal. Most children would have a scapegoat, some friend that they would blame everything on. I just happened to be the person that was blamed for everything and was used. At the time I was academically intelligent, but I would be around the wrong people. I had almost no social development.

On top on the social issues I’d deal with on a daily basis, my dad came home from work. There would always be harsh words that would eventually turn into screaming. I was oblivious to what my parents were fighting about. After fourth grade, my family didn’t eat dinner together. My mother would cook dinner and I would always eat dinner in front at the coffee table in the living room. This is also was a situation that hurts you socially. It is proven that interaction and honesty with your family helps you emotionally and eventually improves your social skills.

During post elementary school, in the fifth and sixth grade, I would not mature at all. This was the beginning of the social woes for me. All of my friends would mature and create friend groups and I would be left with the niche of the outcasts. Every day after school at this point in my life I would eat a huge dinner because I found a source of comfort with food. I would eat enormous amounts of food and do my homework. This produced a huge weight gain for me. So while my classmates would be hitting puberty and be maturing rapidly, I would not. I was always the hyperactive child who knew everyone but for all of the wrong reasons. This lack of maturity led to social deficiency and loneliness.

I had ways to outlet my angst.  I was a percussionist since third grade. I had a drum set at home I used it to outlet my emotions. I also took a self-defense class on Hapkido/ ju jitsu. I also tried to be social by joining the swim team in fifth grade. I made some friends that way so I began to join of clubs like the jazz ensemble. While joining all of these extra-curricular groups I began to create a small friend group. By the time I got to middle school everything changed again.

Once I got into middle school, I gained a lot of weight. I was around two hundred pounds. I was still hanging with my next door neighbor Steven because he introduced me to a lot of people. Even though Steven was beginning to prove to me he was friendly, he taught me how to lie. For a short period of time, I became very popular amongst the student population. The thing about lying is when you lie people believe you until you get caught and lose your credibility. The thing is, I would lie and I would get caught but I wouldn’t learn from my mistakes. I would make crazy lies that to people discovering that I was no what, or who I claimed to be. This dishonesty led down the social latter to the lowest of the low. I was now at the bottom of the social chain. There was nothing that I could do about. I had no one to talk to. One of Maslow’s basic needs is social interaction. We as humans are social creatures. We need to interact to feel love. I burnt a lot of bridges. Once you become a liar you lose the respect of your friends, family, teachers, and acquaintances. People see you and don’t want to talk with you. When you lose your credibility, no person will take anything you have to say seriously. It puts you in your own bubble, your own personal prison. No person will look at you the same way. When I had a seriously true issue that I needed help to understand, people wouldn’t hear it. I cried wolf. I had no one to talk about my parental divorce. No person believed anything that I said. I was trapped in my own prison and I could only figure things out on my own.

You see in middle school people begin to categorize people. You start to hit puberty, well I didn’t. If you don’t have desirable qualities, then nobody will desire you. See I was the worst social person in middle school. I had the labels as follows: fat, creep, liar, untrustworthy, disrespectful, class clown, and non-athletic. My brother saw all of this happening to me. I had him to talk to about all of this at home. Brian was scared for me because he was about to go off to college. He knew all of my social issues. So my brother bought me a puppy. This dog received the name Otis. Otis loved me. Otis was always excited to hang with me when I came home from school. He became the only living thing that I could talk to beyond my brother.

At this point in time, I was dealing with all of these personal issues; with me trying to be social, and dealing my parental divorce. My parents began fighting over me like I’m some sort of object because my brother left the house. At this point they were separated and living in different houses. My parents did not want to lose me. They hated each other and kept trying to make me side with them. My mother kept telling me that my father was a horrible person and didn’t know how to manage his finances. I knew this wasn’t true. My father went back and kept try to explain to me that my mother was insane. All of the normal children my age were hanging out and playing sports. They were socializing meeting people from other schools. I knew I burnt all of my bridges. The children in my middle school began making social strides, learning how to manipulate other people to extremes. They would begin join social niches and hang out with people.  I would sit in my house all of the time. My mom and dad would tell me you need to go play. So I did, I played basketball by myself outside pretending I was Allen Iverson and I was on the Philadelphia 76ers. I would always hit the winning shot, there would always be one second left on the clock. When would the clock ever hit zero. It still hasn’t.

I remembered back in sixth grade when I was lonely that I joined extra-curricular activities. Reluctantly I joined the track and field team. I also joined the soccer team. This physical activity was great for me. I started to lose weight. I began to wake up and smell the roses and look positively. I may not have people who want to talk to me, or hang out with me, but I did have my physical strength to keep up. I tuned out everything social. Nobody asked me for anything and I didn’t ask back. I would also have visions and wonder what my life would be if I had friends.

            WHAT I NEED TO TALK ABOUT AND ADD: Sports (soccer, track, hockey in high school)à Losing weight, trying to improve on lying, extracurricular activities, out of school activities, friends using me for their own personal gain, feeling of judgement and people telling friends “you don’t want to be around him”àdepressionà matured quickly sophomore year in high school and became section leader hockey, felt like things were turning aroundà College, I felt like I missed a beatà slowly heading down the social ladderàmore depressionà learning quickly and maturing