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I am afraid this evening's post will be a brief phone post, as I am too exhausted to crack open my laptop.
Since it was pay day yesterday, my partner and I spontaneously decided to go out for dinner after work. We went to our favourite Italian restaurant and took our time, chatting over some delicious food.
It was a much needed treat after a difficult few weeks juggling our increasingly tense jobs and, besides, I wanted to treat my partner to a nice dinner to celebrate her poetry being published by a magazine in New York.
As soon as I got home, I realised I was l going to have to find my ID card for work tomorrow. I didn't take it with me this morning since I couldn't find it. I subsequently had the ever loving crap kicked out of me by the receptionist when I clocked in.
I had to go through the humiliation ritual of signing in as a visitor and wearing a garish visitor badge.
I decided that I would not be able to afford to go through that indignation again, especially since the question of ordering a replacement card would arise.
I wouldn't want my boss to find out I misplaced my card again. I only got this one a couple of months ago, after losing my last one and subsequently finding it but I was far too embarrassed to ever let anyone know.
I couldn't find it anywhere. I checked trouser pockets, my laptop bag, backpack, desk drawers, side tables. All to no avail. Thus commenced the fun and games, hunting high and low for this crappy credit-card sized ID card that grants me access to the inner sanctum of the company's head office.
Wearing myself out, I left nothing unturned, motivated by the anxiety of what is essentially just a minor inconvenience from occurring tomorrow morning, perhaps accompanied by tutting and some sort of snide remark.
Eventually I found the bloody thing, held upright against the wall tucked into the skirting board behind the less accessible part of my desk.
I hate the fact I am like this. I am so scatterbrained and prone to lose things. Even if I take extra precautions, things seem to slip through my fingers.
I keep in mind I ought to be mindful of where I put things but something always seems to catch me off guard, which is exactly when something vital evades me and slips through the net.
My ID card, my glasses, my keys...
Afterwards I always feel so helpless and stupid. I shouldn't be so hard on myself. I was called clumsy and forgetful, not by anyone who cared for me, but by certain teachers at school. Now I realise just how utterly ridiculous it was to hold such things against me, especially so consistently and with such emotional charge. Especially over such meaningless, low-stakes issues.
Was forgetting my Spanish homework ever a justification to have my book thrown at my desk so hard it would make me flinch? Did it warrant a loud, hard-done-by sigh and a death stare?
It is utterly hysterical.
I cannot imagine, as an adult, belittling a child like this or acting in these unspeakably pathetic and extremely toxic ways. I wouldn't even think to act like this to someone, let alone actually do it. Though I imagine that's precisely the problem, they are not thinking about it very much at all.
Sometimes I remember the kind of sardonic and humiliating things they used to say to me and how it was far worse, far more insidious than the usual fare from my peers.
I'm not just talking about how they mocked me for being clumsy or forgetful, either
When you are younger and not just taught to respect authority, but utterly encapsulated in a sphere of influence that drums this idea into you, you instinctively fear stepping out of line. That is if you are a impressionable, as children naturally are. Doubly so if you are particularly conscientious.
Now, I just wish I could go back and actually be the problem they made me out to be.
I cannot imagine how a responsible adult could ever witness any sort of cruelty towards another child, at the hands of children or other adults, and simply not say or do anything.
I shan't get into that now.
I suppose, even now, the way these people treated me still has a profound effect on me. One I sometimes see echoed by the likes of the woman on reception with her ceaseless snide remarks.
I smile, I force a laugh and I move on.
I sometimes feel like asking her just what exactly it is she gains from acting like such a cunt? I wish I could back and ask my old teachers this too.
As an adult, I have experienced the long and arduous journey of fighting for diagnosis and, as it turns out, I have an underactive thyroid, specifically Hashimoto's disease.
I suspect this is a great part of what wreaked havoc on my concentration as a teenager - along with the usual cocktail of hormones, as well as the rite of passage that is glandular fever.
This, as well as the realisation of many other things, put a lot of my experiences in the past in perspective. Yet many were quick to treat my shortcomings as personal, moral failures.
Was I really all that bad?
I was late, sometimes. I didn't wear my blazer. I chatted in class, usually because I had already finished the task we had been set. Sometimes, I would even talk back if I felt as if there was a particular injustice against my friends and I.
It seems like I annoyed them because I was conscientious at school and did the work but I remained opinionated and subtly resisted the bullshit.
When I think back to how they spoke to me, it felt as if I was made to feel like a criminal over what was objectively very little. Especially compared to some of the real problem children, who lashed out and acted violently.
Perhaps it was because they were too difficult to deal with and I was a better target for their own dark and twisted self-gratification.
Not to say I blame the sorts of kids who set fires, take drugs or lash out at school. It clearly isn't a moral failure on their part either. Bad parenting, lack of support, economic inequality, undiagnosed mental disorders or other conditions.
Does any child 'want' to be bad?
I don't think so, and if you are a teacher who thinks like that you don't have enough compassion to remain in the profession.
School was hell because of arseholes like this, who would rather believe children are out to misbehave on purpose, rather than have a modicum of common sense and realise it may be a symptom of a larger issue that needs addressing.
It's no wonder I have developed generalised anxiety disorder and OCD as an adult.
Specifically, in regards to this subject, a scrupulosity about morality and 'being a good person', whatever that actually means.
I guess, despite this being a phone post, I dug a little deeper than I anticipated.
This farcical goose chase of searching for my ID ate into precious downtime before having to repeat the mundane cycle again tomorrow.
At least it forced me to tidy my bedroom and vent spleen a little bit.
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© 2026 Daniel C. Bush