Still busily maligning our physics teacher, while on our way to algebra, we were hustling up the wide terrazzo steps, the warm spring sunshine on our backs. Reaching the top, we halted in amazement to see a young teenager writhing on the floor, his books and shattered glasses scattered wildly about.

The vice-principal rushed towards us, urging us to keep moving and to stop blocking the staircase. We shuffled along, glancing back, our light-hearted mood suddenly invaded by something scary and unknown.

I didn't’t know the young adolescent  on the floor, but my friend said he was one of the bus students from an outlying farming community. “Don’t you remember him? I had to dance with him at that practice session in the gym before the Junior Prom. I just about fainted from his breath.”

We both grimaced, being from WASP families that never ate garlic, unlike the students whose parents had been born in Eastern Europe, and unaware of future years when garlic would be an appreciated staple in our own  kitchens.

The school buzzed with gossip about Emil, the student having the seizure in the hallway. In a few days he came back to school, a skinny kid with slumped shoulders and unfashionable clothes.

I felt bad one day when I saw some guys hurling insults at his hastily retreating back, but I was also a little afraid of him. He didn't’t show up in September, and I assume he dropped out of school.

This was a long time ago, and with better treatments for epilepsy, a student is less likely to suffer a seizure in public now.

What hasn't’t changed is our fear of what we don’t understand. We tend to avoid, or even worse, actively degrade, or harm people who look or act in strange or unfamiliar ways.

There is a body-based reason for our fear of the unusual. The  fight or flight part of our nervous system stays constantly watchful for danger, and people or situations that are unfamiliar or different catch the attention of this ever-vigilant part of us.

When I saw Emil writhing on the floor, my fight-or-fight system instantly released a rush of hormones which made my heart beat faster, my breathing quicken, and my arms and legs gear up for action. I may have been vaguely aware of heightened feelings, but fear and excitement are experienced much the same in our bodies.

The bigger our reaction, the more likely that fear suppresses our rational brain and our behaviour can twist into actions of hate and violence. Obviously, this is a problem for human beings at both personal and  global levels, but few of us know that the origin of this destructive behaviour is an impulse in our brain developed eons ago to keep us safe.

Our thinking brain has no power to prevent our autonomic nervous system having this reaction to a potential threat, but once we have had it, we can use our powerful frontal lobes to analyze the situation and tell ourselves it is a false alarm. We can then stand down, and do something to reassure ourselves.

If we then learn some facts about the “different others”, chances are we will no longer fear or hate them.

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