As I have mentioned in previous blogs my personal growth was retarded, not because I had a mental condition where I was incapable of learning, but because of my speech impediment and sheer laziness on my part that before I knew it, I was three years behind in my schooling.
It wasn’t bad, especially when I finally got out of the Special Education program, I had spent a good portioned of my early learning at, to find myself in regular school with “normal kids.”
Here’s where it became interesting and awkward for me in that time when at twelve years old, I entered fourth grade and also started puberty. Can you imagine my embarrassment upon going into the restroom and seeing preteen boys who weren’t blessed as I was when I noticed I had hair down there and they didn’t. Needless to say, I went last or used the toilet stalls for privacy.
There were more disadvantages later on, especially junior, and senior high schools where I could not ask a girl out on dates because I was already legally an adult. The girls were at least fifteen to eighteen years old, and anything more than a casual get together at the local Dairy Queen, was more than likely illegal, so I never bothered.
That of course, caused another issue that plagued me later, rumors that I was homosexual because I hung out with guys and not girls. Of course nothing could be further from the truth. I was and still am 100 percent heterosexual. The rumors, I suspect were created by those who didn’t like me and considered me lacking somehow because of my cleft lip and pallet, my age in relation to everyone else in my class, and my own awkwardness, lack of confidence with the opposite sex that most likely motivated these buzzes.
As Goebbels, Hitler propaganda chief famously stated, if one told a lie enough everyone would believe it as truth. Hence, years after I had graduated from high school, and even after coming back from college, the gossip of my sexuality persisted. Out of both frustration from these allegations and my own conflict with my roommate of that time—also a man—I moved away from West Richland, ending up in Pasco and later, Kennewick before ultimately coming up to Spokane in 1998.
Jerry Schellhammer 