I don't even want to say the number of times I wound up bullied and alone and was told that it was my fault (for failing to perform the correct social dance), or that it didn't matter because I didn't look upset enough.
While I'm certainly not going to claim autism or any other mental condition had anything to do with it, it wasn't much better on my end. I do have systemically low blood sugar, which when I was a kid certainly made me irritable. My elementary school decided the best way to convince me to eat a proper breakfast before class and get to know my classmates was make me stand in front of the room eating crackers, and class can't proceed until I'm done.
Oh I had friends, but I got in fights all the time, because when somebody punches me, I'm going to punch back. But in the Twilight Zone of public schooling, one person throwing punches is a bullying problem to be solved by telling an adult (who will then say if they don't see it in progress they can't take any action, and will get you beat up more for being a pussy), but two people throwing punches is a riot and everyone is equally guilty. And when I say "guilty", I mean citation for Disorderly Conduct from the campus police officer "guilty". If anything, I got the heavy end of the stick in these resolutions, because if the common factor in so many campus fights is me, then clearly my puny bespectacled ass is the problem. I'm going around with thick books and long hair trying to pick fights by being so unusual.
It does funny things to your self esteem when at age 13 you find yourself siting in a municipal courtroom, explaining to a city prosecutor that, no, in fact, I
didn't think the guy who'd been calling me a bitch and throwing food at me was trying to proffer an offer of friendship when he started boxing my ears. I think a lot of my lasting reverence for the office of Judge came from that good man sitting up there, watching this trained and licensed legal attorney trying to grill a middleschooler into saying it was his own fault for getting beat up, with a look on his face like he was watching a bad movie, before ruling in my favor after three seconds of bench deliberation.