Spencer Reid was born on October 28, 1981 to William Reid and Diana Reid. He graduated from high school at the age of twelve. In his youth, his father left him and his mother as he could no longer deal with her paranoid schizophrenia, among other things. Reid once mentioned that he was a victim of bullying in school where he was stripped naked and tied to a goalpost in front of other students. After waiting for all the other teenagers to leave, he walked home, only to find that his mother had not noticed he was so late to return because she had been having one of her schizophrenic episodes ("Elephant's Memory"). Reid grew up learning nearly everything he knows from books, with his mother (a college professor of 15th-century literature) often reading to him. Still, Reid knew that the way his mother was living wasn't healthy.