Bullying the Brainiac

Third grade was when I began to shine as a top student. I remember a particular classmate, who also did well in her schoolwork, when she became very competitive. She often won praise from the boys when she would wear a dress and twirl around, so her skirt would flare. I was more of a tomboy and had no interest in a beauty contest. My skills were with pen and paper.

I can still see her sitting at her desk, turning repeatedly from her assignment or quiz to see whether I was finished. She would scribble her answers quickly and look over every minute or so to check my status. Then she would beam with pride after she slapped her pencil down and flipped over her paper, to indicate she was done and had beaten me in the perceived race.

That same year, I realized that students in need of assistance received greater attention. One day, our teacher announced that she had noticed many students holding their pencils incorrectly. She walked from desk to desk to view each student’s grip and provide instruction where needed. I deliberately held my pencil in a distorted manner so she could correct me. That must have been my way of playing dumb.

Years later, but still in elementary school, a boy in my class called me names, like Brainiac, Smarty Pants, The Brain, which should not have offended me, but the derogatory tone he used implied dislike and made me feel less than. When others chimed in, I saw how they really felt.

I began to wonder whether I had conducted myself in a way that projected superiority. Did I ever say anything to imply that anyone else was dumb or not as smart? Or, in typical bully manner, did some who felt inferior seek to portray me as hoity-toity in an effort to dominate over me knowing I might excel in a battle of the wits?

I felt the shame of a brainiac through junior high and high school, though in the much larger class sizes, the competition was greater. By then, I was boy crazy. My test scores seemed less and less important. We had the popular smart kids and the nerdy smart kids; I felt I was lumped into the latter. Perhaps I placed myself there only because that was what I believed.

I seemed to get along best with the tougher teachers. I remember having a fun conversation with a notoriously strict high school English teacher over the appropriate past tense of the word “shit.” I initiated the one-on-one conversation by asking whether the past tense was shit, shitted, or shat. She was amused. The school dictionary did not cover it, and we did not have the luxury of hopping on the World Wide Web for an answer. We both decided it should be “shat.”

In college, the brainiac was gone. I was still a strong student, but I was among many, and my priorities had shifted. In high school, I typically earned an “A” in my written work. In college, I was a journalism major and did well with my writing assignments, but I struggled to earn better than a “B” on anything I wrote in English classes. I had visited a college in Wisconsin that designed English courses specifically for journalism students, which baffled my mom and me. I get it now, because the writing styles are quite different, but I have mad respect for writers who can meet the expectations of both writing for mass media and writing for English composition.

Outside of school, in the land of grownups, I learned that bullies still exist. The brainiacs are the insightful ones, the inquisitive ones, and the ones who are forward thinking. When the bullies fail to connect the dots or otherwise feel defeated, they reveal their ugly spirits. And the name-calling does not go away; rather, it happens behind closed doors and packs a greater punch.