Different

I’ve known I was different since I was young child. People were always telling my parents how proud they must be to have such a well-behaved young girl. As a child I was quiet, reserved. I only spoke when spoken to; I didn’t realize that was the way most people communicated. Most people thought so loudly that I figured, why even bother to talk?

I was six years old when I first realized I was different. I grew up an only child, so I played with stuffed animals and Barbies instead of other children. Both my parents worked during the day, so before I was old enough to go to school, I had a baby-sitter during the day. Theresa was her name. The thing I remember most about her is her hair. She’d sit at our dining room table, doing her homework – she took night classes at a local college because she had two jobs during the day – and every few seconds she’d flick her hair around like she was showing it off to someone, even though no one was there. Of course, I was there, peaking around the corner at her, but she didn’t know. The thought never crossed her mind that I might not be in my room. I know. She was one of those who thought loudly. Mostly she thought about her jobs and the boys in her classes, so I tried my best not to listen too much.

Before I started going to school, I didn’t think I was different. I was me. How else could I be? I assumed other children were like me because I didn’t know there was any other way to be.

I will always remember my first day on the public school bus. My mother came with me to the bus stop, but she had to leave before the bus came because she was a lawyer and she had a very important case that morning that she couldn’t be late for.

There were two other children at the bus stop, one girl and one boy. Both of their mothers were there. My mother explained to them that she had a very important case to go to. I smiled because I knew my mother was a very good lawyer and she liked doing it. The other mothers smiled sympathetically, but as she kissed me on the cheek and said, “Have a good day, honey,” and left, I heard them thinking very mean things about my mother. They thought she was abandoning me! They thought she was a bad mother!

I looked at them, feeling hurt. How could they think those things? My mother was a good mother! She was! But they misinterpreted my hurt expression. “Oh, I’m sure she would stay if she could,” the mother of the girl said. But she didn’t think my mother wanted to stay. She didn’t think my mother cared.

I puzzled over this for the rest of the day. What could this mean? The mothers at the bus stop said one thing but thought another. That night when my father was tucking me in I asked him why a person would say one thing but think another.

“That’s called hypocrisy,” my father answered. “Where did you hear of that?”

So I told him about the mothers at the bus stop that morning and the awful things they had thought about my mother.

His brow furrowed in concern. “Do you think your mother abandoned you?”

“No! Those other kids’ mothers were the ones who thought it! They did hi-po-kru-see!” I said, determined to pronounce the unfamiliar word as testimony to my feelings.

He smiled and chuckled softly. “It’s probably better not going around saying things like that. You can’t always tell what people are thinking. Sometimes you just have to get to know them before you can tell what they’re thinking.”

“But they did…” I trailed off, wanting him to believe me, though it was clear from the look on his face that he didn’t. So I didn’t bring it up again. Every morning after that, my mother waited with me at the bus stop until the bus came. I told her that I understood if she had to go to work, but she insisted on staying. She thought I did want her there, even though I told her the same thing in my thoughts and in my words – I wasn’t going to do hypocrisy like those mothers at the bus stop.

Grade school was one of the worst times of my life. For the first five years of my life my mind had been open and free, but as I met more and more people my age, I began to realize not many other people were like me. In fact, none were like me. My ability, for lack of a better word, seemed to be unique to me. I could never sufficiently explain my intuitions about those around me to others. After a while I realized this ability made me unliked by others because most of them, I found, did hypocrisy. This astonished me. How could so many people live and function if what they said with their mouths was different than what they said with their minds? And since I had very little tact at that young age, everyone knew me as the “tattle-tale”.

Once I realized this, I started trying to ignore the things people said with their minds. It was very difficult at first because I hadn’t tried to restrain myself at all before. But like anything, enough practice will get you anywhere and so by the time I entered junior high it was like there was a switch in my head that I could turn on and off at will to allow the thoughts of others in or to barricade them outside the steel walls of my mind.

I started out in junior high with the switch set to ‘on’ most of the time. I liked it that way. By then I’d gotten used to the double-speak most people used, and I was comfortable this way. I had grown up like this, knowing what others thought. But as junior high progressed and I entered high school, it became more and more awkward. Many of the things people said in their minds were either very private or very destructive. I felt uncomfortable with their thoughts open to me; I felt like I had picked up the phone and someone was already on the line and I was listening to their conversation. So eventually I stopped turning the switch on at all. As far as I was concerned, I never wanted to hear what another person said in their mind ever again.

I’m 18 and I’m a freshman in college now. I’m not so different anymore. I can’t turn the switch on anymore, the switch that lets me hear what other people think. I don’t know when it stopped working. Sometime in high school, I guess.

But it doesn’t matter. Now I only have to worry about what people say out loud – less to remember. And this way, I can almost make myself believe people don’t do hypocrisy. Well…almost.