I want to be a community

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I go to a small high school. Only about 775 enrolled in the whole school, and my graduating class has about 140 kids in it. It is bigger than some places, but I'm sure this is small for a public school.

The following story is sad, and kind of long, but bear with me please, for I have an idea.

My junior class has never been the favorite among teachers (There are a few horror stories of why this is so, but I won't tell them here)

We have been described as lazy and apathetic etc.
We are not significantly close as a class.

To be honest, I've never really liked being a part of it for the above reasons. I even thought that I didn't like being apart of the community sometimes. This feeling is gone.

_To interject a fact here, I sometimes feel as if I do not belong. I do not have diagnosed autism, but I do have several autistic tendencies, so it is possible I do. Regardless, I sometimes feel like I don't fit in with this community. But I learned something about my community that changed this feeling. _

Like I said, I wasn't to thrilled to be in with this class, but I dealt with it, and For the most part things went alright.

Being a small community, big things rarely happen, and when they do, the entire community finds out really quickly.

A big thing happened this week, and I will warn you, this is not a good big thing.

I was the internet and had facebook pulled up.

When I refreshed the page I saw somebody had posted a quite sad status about someone she knew dying. There was a picture posted which I did not immediately stop to look to close at. (I didn't recognize the people at first, one of my autistic tendencies. It's even harder when it is a picture)

She went to a different school, so I assumed it might be someone from her school.

Then I scrolled down, I saw another status mentioning the same name. (niether had given last names, but I could piece together what school they went to with two statuses like that) I scrolled back up to the picture and looked at it closely and realized I knew her.

She was in my graduating class.

I have had classes with her.

I haven't talked to her much in the past couple of years. It's not that I didn't want to, she was just not in many classes with me, maybe one or two since freshman year. We were never really friends either.

I continued to scroll down, and just about everyone of my facebook friends from the community had a memory to share, or a Rest In Peace to give.When the calling hours and funeral time had been set, The principal sent out a text through the text alert database. The choir group she was in was asked to sing at her funeral.

The students, in honor of her wore green to the game that Friday, and some students stood in the front bearing her name in duct tape.

This girl was the unofficial founder of a club a teacher had set up previous to her death, the club involved growing flowers for various purposes (Like to give to high schoolers who are having a rough day. The teacher who leads the club sent out a text because she had wanted to bring flowers to the funeral, but it being the middle of winter, there were none growing. So she suggested we all make some flowers and incorporate green in them somehow

(I am not sure the significance of the color green, maybe it was her favorite?)

I went to the calling hours, which were originally to be held for 6 hours, It was packed and everyone there said they waited at least 3 hours.

Finally it is today, we had a snowday yesterday, so I am back to school on Tuesday. She was mentioned on the daily announcements and my teachers are all making speeches about what happened.

One teacher enforced a point that is really sticking with me.

I live in an amazing community. Looking back at these past years, every football game I've been to, the stands are packed, and most everyone is sporting the school colors.

Even though I couldn't utter a word of comfort to anyone at the calling hours, because I have some trouble coming up with the right words on a normal day, I realized that everyone there had to be feeling like that.

Every choir concert is packed, every theatre performance comes close to selling out.

Sure we have our share of drama and such but truthfully I live in such a strong community.

Want to know a good big thing that has happened? We sent a teacher from our high school to Peru for a week, but that is another story.

My point is that Even though I am kind of an odd number in class, not usually finding a partner for partner work,I have eaten alone at lunch several times before, I'm a complete loner in study hall!

But I'm a part of my community.

We can get together and show so much support for those who need it.

I really didn't mean this to be depressing, so I am going to turn this around.

Maybe you don't feel like you are a part of something.

Maybe you like it that way, you probably hate it that way if that's true though.

So here is what we are going to do. People of Wrong Planet: We ARE a community!

No matter what, whether you are neurotypical, Aspie, Autistic or another, we are a community.

So let us all support one another.

See someone post about having a rough day? Reply with encouraging words!

We could start something. Right here, right now. Let's not wait for something drastic, let's be a community now.



Some of us need help on knowing what to say, and, after all, we are a community, so we need to help each other. If anyone has good advice for more ways we can become a tight knit community here on Wrong Planet, feel free to post about it here.

Have you made friends on Wrong Planet before? Tell about that experience.

I look forward to hearing what you all have to say.

P.S. I apologize for that sad first part, I just wanted to talk about it someway, somehow, and plus, It emphasized my point well.

I feel you could definitely make friends on WrongPlanet. There are quite a few people who are friendly here.

This Site is for people who have autism, who have friends who have autism, who have family members who have autism. Even if they don't know someone with autism, the Site is for people who want to know about autism, and to propagate knowledge of autism amongst the "wider" community.

My graduating class was five people. I went to a school which had only 100 students. It was for "gifted underachievers."

When I went to college, though, many years later, there were about 400 in the graduating class. The school had about 2,500 people.