The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

As a child, I fully expected to be bullied. I was quite intelligent for my age, I enjoyed school and thanks to my dyspraxia I was useless at so many things. I kind of felt that I deserved to be bullied, something I now know to be silly. No-one ever deserves to be bullied, no matter what the circumstances. It only occurred to me recently that I was bullied quite a lot over my school life. It was never terrible, I could always cope with it but I suspect it probably affected me in subtle ways that I’ve not really noticed. It’s no wonder that I’m quite shy and unassertive as an adult given that when I was more confident as a child and even to some extent as a teenager I was ridiculed. There’s not one person that bullied me, more a series of disturbed personalities that sought me out as a way of making them feel better about themselves. Some I have forgiven, because they didn’t mean it and things just got out of hand when they were amongst their friends. Others were just nasty people, ...

People, in general, suck. I came to this conclusion some time ago and am regularly reminded of it. Take the other day for example. In a rare excursion into society, I was returning from a Christmas shopping trip with my friend Paul. We had got into Paul’s car and were just sorting out the shopping when there was a knock on the window. Paul opened the door to find a woman, clutching a baby, asking if we were leaving. This was not an unreasonable request, although knocking was a little impertinent, and we informed the woman that yes, we were about to leave. The door was shut and the woman backed off a little to where her husband was waiting in their car. It quickly became apparent that the windscreen was misted over and we would have to wait a few minutes for it to clear. Paul, demonstrating the qualities I look for in a friend, kindly opening the door to inform the woman that we would be a short while due to this issue. Shortly after the door was shut the knock came again and the w...

It has now been two weeks since my last blog post, although it feels like a life time. In my experience, it can be a challenge as a blogger to have regular new posts all the year round. It’s fine when things are happening, when there are events to discuss but I would say that almost nothing of interest has happened since my last post and I haven’t had any genius brainwaves for a witty post, something which I will humbly say is unusual. Today I have decided to scrabble together some kind of post because I feel I ought to and because I’m in the mood for writing. The one bit of news I do have to share with you comes from my first appraisal. An appraisal is where those superior to you in your workplace inform you how good you are of doing the job and what things they want you to improve on. Obviously this is my first full time job and therefore my first ever appraisal, but the process is almost identical to the feedback you get on a teaching placement. My last teaching placement was ful...