I was pretty anti-social in high school. I had an attitude, family issues and a lot of anger, so I know why I didn't have many friends. What shocks me now in the era of FB is a lot of old high school faces showing up and wanting to friend me. Maybe that's just FB, but I'm still surprised none the less. People have even managed to forgive when I chose to bully them for my own stupid, selfish reasons.
Anyways. You'll learn to spot the trouble makers. Your fears are (mostly) overblown...but it does happen.
I was in three fights that I remember in high school.
One I started. Some really fat, socially awkward kid decided he was going to play some tough D with me in gym, and I responded in kind. On the way out of the locker room, I gave him a shoulder at full speed. It escalated and we ended up in the concourse thrashing each other. The seniors loved it, at any rate.
Second fight, some testosterone filled jerk went charging through the halls, randomly yelling and shoving people. I happened to get in his way. I called him out, and he pointedly asked me if I "wanted to fuck with this" and I said no, because the dude was huge.
The last one will never make sense to me. One day in the hall, out of the blue, a kid two years my junior slaps me upside the face. I'm inches away from wailing on the skinny little punk when his much, much larger friend steps in and says "I'm not going to let you hurt him." The punk starts taking shots at me FROM AROUND HIS FRIEND, and when I question why he's standing up for his friend being a little bitch, he has no response. But I still have to get through him to his friend, and by now there was a crowd of other people circling me as well.
The same day, about 4 friends of my brother, all seniors, have nice private chats with both of them, and that was the end of that. I think I had managed to piss off someone with a large circle of friends, and after hating on me enough, one of them decided to screw with me.
The point to all this is I brought most of it on myself by my attitude. I'm not physically intimidating but I have an attitude, and everyone wanted to knock the chip off my shoulder. But even then, I was caught in the occasional mindless shit that people do in high school.
My advice would be don't sweat it, honestly, but figure out sooner rather than later how willing you are to fight for your pride, your reputation, or just to get some asshole off your back. High school is a primer for the real world lesson that some people are just dicks, and will never like you. Get on friendly terms with the bad asses. Not the guys who are cruising for trouble, but the guys who have this "street smarts" everyone likes to talk about. You don't have to start smoking or being bad, but just being normal and chill with those kids goes a long way towards earning their respect, when they get so much contempt from other kinds of kids. And don't be afraid of them. Then they'll have contempt for you.
And for the record, by the time I ended, I was definitely in the bad kid's crowd. I was notorious for coming to class smelling of smoke and not being embarrassed about it like the rest of the very secure, suburban white kids would have been. I reveled in it, and that was my part of my problem. I also enjoyed arguing with my teachers and administrators as an adult...i.e. as though I was their equal. I even made a teacher cry. Booyah.
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Actually, make that four fights. One day I approached a kid, almost exactly my build, and asked him for a quarter to call for a ride home on the pay phone. We knew each other, had joked around, but we weren't friends. For some reason, I decided to get physical, and put him in a headlock. It was funny at first, we were laughing and joking around, but it didn't take long for him to get pissed, and then we started fighting for real.
5 minutes later, I still didn't have his quarter, and he swore that I was going to pay for being such an asshole.
In about two weeks, I'll be Dave's groomsman. High school is funny like that.
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Topic: Going to a 'real' school. :-O (Read 6270 times)