sitting out

Navelgazing is fun and I do it all the time. probably like everyone else I'm constantly trying to assess and discern my place relative to everything else in the world, however hopeless a cause this might be since the world is so fantastically complex, my understanding is so limited, and things like 'myself' might not even be coherent. It's hard to attack this head-on, so I'll write about times when I've stuck-out, felt distinct from others etc. Not because these are unique, I'm sure everyone feels these things, but rather because they might be clarifying.

I went to a public elementary school. Each day, I would walk over to my friend's house and me and him and his sister would walk the 4 blocks to school. The school had a wide array of SES level kids and apparently some 'progressive' leadership because when I was in 4th grade (~10yo?) they decided to implement a policy where the students had to wear uniforms. This was, they said, a means to make the poor kids feel less bad about their clothes vis a vis the rich kids or something like that.

Whatever the rationale, I was dead set against it. I suspect now it might have had something to do with gender-related issues of mine, but I'm not sure. At the time I was very into contemporary alternative rock music. I remember a binder I had with a big pink heart sticker on it signaling my allegiance to the band Hole. I had a backpack with that jangled with the collection of random buttons I pinned to it. And I had a load of bright neon clothes and band tshirts from places like Zumiez and Trendy Wendy (womans club apparal store on capital hill in seattle). I was into the abject, I took pictures of trash and thought myself very gritty and arty. Needless to say, a uniform policy was not something I was interested in.

I got into arguments with other kids, older kids, parents about it and my own parents were very supportive of my whining. I remember people telling me that this was good preparation for the future and workplace dress codes. I remember touting my extra special fanciness and how I was pulled out of class to do big kid math and reading and stuff, so you don't need uniforms to be a good student. My brother, eager to fit in, was excited to wear a uniform, and we got written up in the paper about this. A lot of this is sort of cringe-inducing now, but it was a righteous crusade back then. I had one-on-one meetings with the principal and after a long ordeal, I was exempted from the policy. Everyone in the school had to wear uniforms, except me, I could continue to wear my silly costumes.

In high school 2001 happened when I was a sophomore and then 2002 happened and 2003. All the while I was reading lots of Chomsky, Angela Davis, adbusters, crimethinc, etc. I wrote my own little essays on how the colin powell shit at the UN was an obvious farce and my teachers were concerned and put off by it. I was a star student, athlete, etc. which made things maybe weirder. It's bullshit, but they let you gget away with more stuff if you're doing well by their metrics. In any case, I stopped standing for the pledge of allegiance and sneered at everyone else who did. I was threatened with punishment that never came.

Why am I like this? these are both individualistic meaningless ineffectual things, but also why isn't everyone else like this. I'm no more moral or smart or whatever than other people. Both of these things are basically passive refusals to do things, which imo is much less good than actually doing something. But why was no one else refusing? What does this mean?