A Place to Fit In

For me, the strain of fitting in started after my parents divorced and my mother, sisters and myself moved to a new town. I had grown up just outside of Boston. At the time of the divorce it was 1972 and I was eight years old and starting third grade. We only moved two towns over from where I spent my first eight years, but it was a different culture. We had moved from a two-family home into public housing and I shared a bedroom with my older and younger sisters. The town was a nice, fairly wealthy place with an excellent school system, public transportation and lots of kids. But the kids were different from the ones in my old neighborhood, or maybe I was different. I was picked on, bullied and beat up. Maybe it was my because of my hand-me-down clothes or the bad haircut from mom. I don’t really know. I missed my old school, neighborhood and friends.