I've always been shy around people I don't know, so I never had many proper friends when I was younger.
I have an amusing last name so it was ALWAYS picked on, but I got over that after a while. I was just like 'Those jokes are SO old!' and they eventually stopped because they realised they weren't getting a reaction, and they were the ones who looked stupid. I'm proud of my last name now.
There were the occasional days where I would fake sick to get out of going to school and facing certain people who always put me down, but year 7 and 8 were the worst years. I had no friends in my class, so everyone would laugh at me, call me names, throw stuff at me, and I'd always cry because I was easily upset and an easy target for bullies... until one day I stopped crying and stopped giving them the reaction they wanted, and they just got bored of me because no matter what they did, I never said a word and just sat in my seat as if nothing happened. Their insults still hurt, but from what they could see, they just bounced off me and had no effect.
It screwed me up a bit, because I had other things going on in my life which made it a rough time for me, but Looking back, the experiences have toughened me up a lot and I'm not affected by what people think of me anymore. People in my year have matured and they have no problems with me at all now. All of the main idiots dropped out of school as soon as they could.