Tell us about a time when you felt out of place.

Tell us about a time when you felt out of place.

How about my whole childhood.

I was the youngest in every class due to my birthday. In reality, I should have started school a year later than I did, but I was able to keep up academically so no one did anything.

As a result, I was a year behind everyone in maturity. I was always small and learned a lot of social things after the others already knew. It made for a tough time. It was particularly awkward in the whole girl/boy life dance as the girls were a year older, but years older in maturity and size for many of them. Most of them stopped maturing at the end of high school as I discovered in conversations with them later. I was just beginning to catch up the end of high school. Kids are cruel though so it was tough.

I caught and passed almost all of them because it drove me to succeed after banging my head against the wall of life up until that time.

I got no help from my sibling who was 2 years older, but only one grade ahead due to the birthday timing. When She could have helped, she jumped on the side of the other kids to make my life a lot more difficult than it needed to be.

It made me tougher in the long run. I had to figure out how to be street smart without any directions. Like the song Night Moves, I was searching for answers without any clues.

So childhood, I spent a lot of it out of place.