In middle school, after a couple of incidents, a school therapist came talk to me. He decided to ask me, "are you maladjusted?"

How is a kid in sixth grade supposed to answer that?

I didn't know how to answer, all I knew was that "mal" was the prefix for bad, so I thought he meant that I was adjusting badly to middle school.

So I said yes.

The next thing I know he's telling my parents that I'm a bad kid and that I deserve my suspension for fighting after being bullied for months on end and finally lashing out at my bully. My parents, luckily, didn't buy it but they never really knew what the school therapist had asked me in the first place so while I'm being called a bad kid in one place, I was considered justified in fighting back at my bully in another.

Mind you, that bully had tried to beat up my brother before these incidents and was friends with my friends during this time. Luckily change came around, but it was too late in some places to salvage some of the friendships I had with that group.