A CHANGED VERSION OF WHAT I’D LIKE TO SAY IF I ATTEND THE SCHOOL REUNION.

Six years ago, when I got a new car, a man I was friendly with said, “I like that car. It’s more you. That old car, it wasn’t you.” I wondered what he meant and I thought, “Okay, does he mean the fact that it’s a more bland colour?” “Does he mean it’s more my style?”

I remember a superficial bully at school telling me that if I wanted to be more popular, I should let my hair grow long at the back, do something else, that was just nonsense, and graffiti my schoolbag. Okay, I did have slightly longer hair at one point, sort of like Dan Hartman’s when he sang, “I Can Dream About You,” but I have wavy hair and quite thin hair, so the ends split and it didn’t look right, and I didn’t really like it anyway. As for putting graffiti on my schoolbag, the operative word was, “your” bag, so it was MY schoolbag and if I wanted to put graffiti on it, I could, and if I didn’t, well, who else’s business was it, anyway?

I also remember a day when this same kid and another endlessly harassed me all lunch hour, and a teacher asked what was going on and this kid said, “He’s a weirdo, Sir.” Had I been the teacher, I would have said to the kid, “Okay, is he trying to hang around YOU, or are you trying to hang around him? Because, generally, if somebody thinks somebody is a weirdo, they prefer to avoid them, not hang around them.” Well, guess what, that teacher was my Year Twelve Science Teacher, and three years later, was my brother’s science teacher, and I’ll never forget my brother coming home and saying that the teacher asked if I was his brother and the teacher was pleased that I was at university and said I deserved to be as I’d worked hard.

To some kids, I may have been a nerd, a weirdo, or whatever, but what I needed was someone, preferably either a prefect or a teacher, to have said to these kids, “Did you ever think that maybe he’s an introvert and that maybe, at lunchtime, he’s not “Mr No Mates,” rather he’s someone who prefers to sit and eat his lunch alone because he needs some time to self-regulate having spent time in a classroom? So, why don’t you just leave him alone?”

When I reached Year Eleven, I remember a kid in my math class, who sniggered to his friends that, a) I stayed home and studied but failed my subjects (the latter was false), but they fooled around and passed, and, b) he seemed to think it hilarious that I took longer to do the math test than he did. Here’s what he doesn’t know, I received the shock of my life when I obtained my report and saw, “Math In Society: Very High Achievement.”

At the age of 35, I was diagnosed as autistic, something that brought me a sense of self and a sense of identity. I had found my people.

I am a member of the Class of 1991, at Runcorn High School, and I look back on that year as having stimulating conversations with Miss Harris and Mr McKillop. I may have been different to some of my classmates, but my message to those who bullied me is, “You tried to destroy me or change me into someone I wasn’t. I remember this same kid who said that he wished he could kill me. But guess what, you didn’t succeed. Had I wanted to avoid any reminders of my time at Runcorn or possibly taken my own life, you’d have succeeded, and that was something I did not want you to do.”