Beautiful and Depressing

Someone posted the link below on a list I read:

Which shows a truly magnificaent ornithopter in flight.  I looked further down the page and spotted the Air Jelly:

And then I wrote this to the list:

I have to tell you that my response is two-fold -- first of all, I am charmed and inspired.

My other response is to want to weep and then visit every single ueber-fanatical fundamentalist church, the US congress, and the RNC headquarters and beat every last son-of-a-b*tch into jelly with a sledgehammer for letting their greed, selfishness, resistance to science, and complete, overwhelming lack of true vision deprive us of being the ones to produce things as beautiful and inspiring on a regular basis. I don't begrudge it to Germany, but I am soul-stressingly sad that we don't do this kind of thing any more, or often, because we have dismantled everything that would have made it possible -- from a national sense of wonder about natural science to an education system that would prepare our children to create magnificent things, and we can't even seem to find it in ourselves to tell ourselves the truth anymore. It crushes me. It f*cking crushes me.

My husband and I would have given our eye teeth and then some, to be a part of that in our younger days. Our children, despite brains and dreams, have little chance, due to shitty preparation and an even shittier political (ie funding and infrastructural support) climate, of being able to participate in the genesis of mechanical/technical wonders.

Where's my goddamned sledgehammer?

Cognitive Dissonance

In case no one noticed, it's been a while since I've posted. There are reasons, which are also excuses, and maybe someday (if I continue to post) I'll explain them. Meanwhile, it's time for a little snark.

This year, I have only one child left in public school (happy dance, happy dance). The high school he attends has instituted "Sustained Silent Reading" for 25 minutes, three times a week. I could go on about how useful I think this is at the high school level, but I would bore myself just writing about it. And, in general, I think letting kids read what they want to read for extended periods of time without interruption is a good idea; we certainly do plenty of it at home and always have, and it's something each and every one of my children has rejoiced over when they attend WeeM with me ("I can sit in the lobby and read and no one bothers me! Wow! It's almost like being at home.").

For the sake of form, I will also mention, whilst mentally looking off to the side as a diversionary maneuver, that this is a loss of 75 minutes per week of instructional time (ack!) on the block schedule. Ahem. However, in the general realm of theory meets reality, I'm OK with SSR, since most teachers use the last half hour of their classes as study hall for the kids to do their homework, so the kids aren't losing anything they weren't deprived of already.

Last month, though, my youngest came home very disgruntled. His PE class was having a free day. Apparently, during a free day in gym, you can throw a dog toy back and forth with other children, which is called "Throwtron", pick some other activity, or wander in a large circle around the gym for 90 minutes. He chose to wander in a circle, and, because that would generally be considered quite supremely boring, he decided to read while wandering. There weren't a lot of other children wandering -- I guess the lure of chucking a dog toy was too much for some of them to resist -- and he was ambling happily and quietly around, reading.

After a short while, the student teacher noticed, came tearing over and told him he wasn't allowed to read.

Take a moment to let that one soak in, please. He wasn't allowed to read. In a school diverting 75 minutes per week of instructional time to a schoolwide policy to encourage reading, my son was not allowed to read during non-SSR time while walking in a circle. Keep letting that soak in.

He asked why and was told it just was not permitted, and he would not be allowed to listen to an MP3 player or Walkman unless he was Power Walking either. So, he put his book aside and continued to amble around in a circle.

Later on, the staff teacher came over and, in a very intimidating manner, asked him why he was giving the student teacher a hard time. He was gobsmacked by this accusation, and, as far as he remembers, just stood there not speaking, at which point the coach/teacher advised him that it was a safety hazard and he was not to do it again. Let that one soak in, too, reading is a safety hazard when you are walking in a fairly lightly populated circle of very few other children who have opted to wander around rather than chucking pet toys at each other's heads.

Now, I don't dispute the teacher's point -- perhaps one of the knuckle-dragging mouthbreather types who might have been participating in a more hazardous activity would have lobbed a dog toy off to the side and clonked my nerdling on his unobservant head. I cannot figure out how that would be my nerd's fault rather than the fault of the mouthbreather, but he still would have wound up being clonked. Perhaps a more exuberant Power Walker would have been distracted by wild lyrics and a driving heavy metal beat on his/her MP3 player and stomped right over my son, which, again, would not have been my son's fault, but he would still wind up with sneaker marks on his back.

And, just to put a cherry on the top of this sundae of dissonance, he received an F for the day for participation. For wanting to quietly read while engaged in a boring physical activity and asking why he was not allowed to read. Beware the scary, non-conformist, bibliophilic nerd; he is a silent lurking hazard.

When Doodle regaled us with this story, my daughter started shaking her head and reminded us of a similar incident that happened to her while she was in the same high school. She was taking dual credit college courses at school, which started a little later, and which were not offered every day. On her off days, she would go to the school library to read, look over homework, and make quiet, productive use of her time.

She would enter the library, find a table near the back, open up a book and start reading or maybe look out the window. For the first couple of weeks, the library staff kept coming over and asking her what she was doing. She told them, and they would just stand there looking at her for a minute. Perhaps they thought she was going to burst into flame or offer them illicit drugs. Mostly, they didn't believe her. And the reason they didn't believe her is that this was aberrant behavior for students in a school library. Take another moment and let that one soak in, too -- a student using extra time to go to the library and read is an anomalous behavior in the school.

They did stop coming over to find out what she was up to after a while, but then spent time just staring at her from their desks/safety positions near the emergency hotline (or whatever), in case she did spontaneously combust or begin dancing the tarantella on the tables, thereby disrupting the other students who.... weren't there. In fact, in a year of going to the library on her off days, the only time other students came into the library was when an entire class came in with the teacher to do a specific project, during which time they were invariably noisy, obnoxious, and didn't concentrate on what they were supposed to be doing.

After this happened a couple of times, she decided to leave a few minutes before the bell and go get her stuff from her locker and make sure to be at her first class a little early. That worked out fine until she got caught being in the halls before the bell, screamed at by a teacher, and sent to the office for disciplinary action...for going to her locker early to get her supplies so she could be early and prepared for class. Let that one soak in, too.

I suppose you'd need to know my daughter to understand why this is possibly the most ludicrous, inexplicable response to her actions -- people smile when she comes into a room because she is a happy, quiet person. She is generally teacher's pet in every class, including the professors she has in college. She is calm, diligent, intelligent, does her homework before it's due, respects teacher time, follows directions, checks her resources, thinks deeply about issues, gives measured and worthy responses to questions, and, so far, has a straight A record in college. Her professors invite her out for a smoothie in the Caf when they need cheering up. They tell her they appreciate having her in class. They give her sweatshirts, hoodies, and free lockers just because she is so swell. She's allowed to use their personal equipment without supervision because she's so darned trustworthy and sensible. And she has always been this way.

So, for the very first time in 13 years of public schooling, her first and only disciplinary referral was because she was doing something as threatening to life as we know it as... getting her class supplies early so she could be early and prepared for class.

Somehow, somewhere, the educational industry has lost sight of reality and has completely forgotten the underlying principle to encouraging good habits and behavior.

It's pretty simple, really, "Reward the behavior you wish to encourage."

I suggest they start taking notes. There will be a quiz.

WeeMed Out

Oooh, that sounds a little nasty. Anyway, it was lots of fun this year – some of the same programs and some new ones, basically the same food menu with more bounteous and more chocolaty sweets this time around (last year I was late and wound up confronted by what looked like an angry blanc mange as the sole remaining treat). It was nice having my daughter with me because I got to see some things through fresh eyes. Some of her observations:

1. No one bothers you if you’re reading, even if you’re doing it during dinner at a full table. They respect your love of reading.

2. Very few shirts for sports teams – mostly smart aleck remarks or puns or clever quips. She even spotted an IMSA t-shirt. (My favorite: I don’t think much, so I might not be.)

3. Puns and smarty-pants remarks on the posters – “Free Soda: Exact Change Required” or a sign under the quiche, “Vegetarian, not Vegan…Duh!”

4. We missed some programs because we were too busy talking with interesting people.

5. Everyone is nice, and (ahem) Mom is popular (grin).

6. The souvenir shirts are cool. So are squirrels.

Some things I noticed:

1. Many people expressed a sense of relief or joy at being with other Mensans – two memorable remarks: “I haven’t spoken that deeply on a topic in MONTHS” and “It’s so nice to be somewhere where I don’t have to explain what a Klein bottle is.”

2. Even if I don’t care about a topic, listening to the selected programs is always interesting. Being me, a total goober, I walked into a conference room to attend a meet and greet for online Mensans. Turns out, the last program was still going on – on foreskin restoration. It took me a couple of minutes to figure that out, since there were no explicit pictures or language for those couple of minutes (although the large pink florescent penis and partial balls on the table should have clued me in, but I don’t like to assume…), and by then, I was moderately interested, even though I can’t imagine a topic I’d be less likely to seek out. It was very scientific and clinical, the speaker read testimonial letters, and I could tell he felt very sincere and earnest about his topic. Twenty minutes later he finished up, redirected a lot of people looking for a speaker on ghosts, and then the online thing started.

3. The hugs were even better this year.

4. It’s fine, even normal, to skip all the programs and just hang out and snork up beer and/or broccoli and chat with other Ms.

5. I’m not the only person who gets a little ferocious when the caffeinated coffee runs low.

6. Even the inexplicable costumes were funny.

7. No one b*tch slapped me for knitting all over the place. I even knit during the Saturday evening show and tried Very Hard not to clank like a member of a chain gang.

8. Hi, Bill! It was nice to finally meet you in real life!

OK, so I have to go catch up on laundry and get dinner started. I’m still smiling, though, which is nice.

THE Talk

I’ve now had to have The Talk with my two oldest children. I knew when I became a parent that someday I’d need to have the talk with them. I naively thought The Talk would be about sex and figured that I was pretty much done when we had that one at the onset of puberty for each child.

With my oldest one, and I do pity firstborns because things are usually awkward and untried with them, so they have to cope with experimental parenting as well as their own issues, I tried to be fairly clinical. I managed to avoid using charts or illustrations, and, eventually, I handed off to my husband. Being a man of few words, he raised one finger in the air wisely, opened his mouth, stalled while thinking for a minute or so, and then blurted out, “Let me know if you need any condoms.” Spawn’s brains caught fire and he had to smother the flames by putting a pillow over his head and squeaking a lot. Maybe he was laughing; I know I was. Hubs looked sheepish, shrugged, and left the room, figuring he’d done his fatherly duty. I suppose, if one is of a pithy type, he had.

Anyway, The Talk is not That talk. The Talk goes more like this:

Me: I need to talk with you about your performance in school.

Subject Juvenile (hereinafter SJ): You mean my grades, don’t you?

Me: Yes and no.

SJ: That means ‘yes’.

Me: Don’t distract me. I’m concerned that you are not working at your best level of performance.

SJ: Because I got a B? Geez, you always want me to be perfect.

Me: No, not because you got a B. I don’t care about Bs. What I care about is that I see you doing a lot of self-sabotaging and not turning in your best work, and that concerns me.

SJ: Because you want me to be perfect and have straight A’s and not have a life!

Me: No, those are not my standards, nor are they requirements. Grades are A reflection of performance, but they are not the only gauge of performance. What I’m worried about is that you are not developing academic diligence, and that is going to bite you on the behind in college. I am also concerned that you don’t want to put in your best effort just for the sake of doing so.

SJ: Why should I if I can get A’s from doing papers the night before or even if I don’t study, or if the teachers keep putting the due dates back? Why should I stress out over stuff like that if I can get good grades without working hard?

Me: Because this is not about grades, it’s about the pursuit of excellence for its own sake and for your sake in understanding what you can do when you really put your mind and effort into it, and for you to understand what you need in order to really do your best work. The end result of doing that, at this point in your life, MIGHT be a good grade and probably would be, but you know from past experience with me that if I see you putting in the time and putting in the thought and paying attention to what you are doing, I really don’t care what kind of a grade you get. Excellence has been diligently pursued, and that’s the point. If I think your teacher is being unfair or arbitrary, I’ll talk to them, but if I’m happy with your behavior, I have made a point to say so when that happens, and you know that.

SJ: So, if I work really hard on this term paper, and it “shows” to you, but I still get a B or a C on it, you don’t care.

Me: Mostly, no. If I think your teacher was grading improperly, I’ll say something and you can decide to take it up with the teacher or to have me do so if you wish. If you get a C, my first thought would be that, given you worked to your best ability, something went missing – maybe the teacher thought they specified something and didn’t, or maybe you forgot to do a specific something. But neither one of those things is going to make me think you did a slapdash job or sloughed off.

SJ: And, even if I can get A's without studying, you still think I should study?

Me: Yep. As you progress through school and into college and from there into the working world, you are going to, increasingly, need to develop your OWN standards which are as high or higher than those of your teachers, professors, and bosses. Those standards may be in different areas, with different goals, or they might be the same, but I think you need the practice in a) setting high standards for yourself, b) working diligently towards those standards, and c) understanding what it means to reach them or how to handle not reaching them as well. There will also be times when you may need to set your standards a little lower because you have other things that are more demanding that take precedence. All of that requires practice and awareness.

SJ: So, you’re saying that it’s OK to lower my standards sometimes?

Me: Yes, judiciously. Look, everyone has some point in time where their load is too heavy or too demanding and they really cannot put all their best effort towards everything – there aren’t enough hours in the day, their health is bad, they are having real trouble in some other area and need to put more attention towards fixing that – stuff like that. It’s called “prioritizing”.

SJ: Why should I “prioritize” schoolwork? Maybe I’m “prioritizing” my friendships.

Me: We both know that’s code for “I don’t wanna do it.”

SJ:

Me: Straight out, my experience with you and your work is that you have little experience in pursuing excellence for its own sake or for the sake of learning your own needs in achieving excellent results, you have minimal experience in understanding your time requirements, and you don’t really understand how to maximize your resources to your best advantage to achieve an outstanding result that YOU can be proud of. I’ve watched you put forth minimal to moderate effort in school for years now, and get praise and good grades for working far beneath your abilities. I’ve seen you look smug and disappointed at the same time, and I’ve seen what it’s done and is doing to your character. It is one of the things that has truly angered me about your schooling – that your teachers and peers reward you for putting so little effort into your work.

You are now hitting the wall in terms of not being able to achieve the results you are accustomed to with the same minimal effort, and you are getting angry and resentful and loud and difficult to live with, and that has to stop. And all of that is happening because you know that you are capable of doing better and you are disappointed in yourself for not doing better, right?

SJ: Yeah.

Me: So, rather than standing by, as I have been doing, biting my tongue, I’m stepping in now and telling you that things need to change, that you need to start learning academic rigor, self-discipline, set high standards for yourself, and learn the skills you need to achieve those results; that you need to learn how to pursue excellence so that you can be proud of what you create and achieve instead of resentful that it isn’t as easy as it used to be.

SJ: OK, I get it. … Are you mad at me?

Me: Not really. You haven’t been challenged to be your best outside of this house before this, so you have no experience in dealing with such a challenge. It’s very hard for me to tell someone who’s getting straight A's that they’re not working hard enough because how much harder can you work? Where are the rewards for doing so? I understand that. Things are different this year, and I’ve stood back to see how you’d react and given you time to learn on your own.

I still expect you to learn on your own – I’m just telling you that I see this problem and I expect you to handle it. It’s a tough call for a parent to make – if I speak up, am I interfering or am I doing the right thing. I’m not even sure myself. I just know that I can’t continue to sit by and listen to your anger and let you be hard to live with because you are frustrated – that’s hard on me and the other family members. You need to fix it, and this is my perspective on what’s going on.

SJ: It’s really not about the grades, is it?

Me: Remember “Skills for Adolescence”? Did I ride you like a donkey to excel in that class, or did I agree that it was a waste of your time and set some minimum grade standards?

SJ: Yeah, OK, I remember that.

Me: If you need to ask me for resource material or websites or advice, you can, but I’ve said my piece.

SJ: OK. Thanks. I think I understand better now what you’ve been telling me all these years, I just didn’t get it before because… I guess I didn’t see the reason for it before.

Me: OK. You do know that one way or the other, whether you decide to make changes or not, I love you just the same, right?

SJ: Yeah, I know.



I still don’t know if speaking up is the right choice, and I don’t know if I’ve done it well or really remarkably badly. I am seeing some changes, mostly for the positive now, but that could be short term. I don’t know. I want my kids to be happy in their adult lives; I want them to understand how well they can do when they try, how to prioritize, how to forgive themselves when they don’t do well, and how to keep trying. I want them to be proud of themselves, knowing they’ve done a good job, even if no one else ever acknowledges it, regardless of whether it’s a business plan, a doghouse, or a dinner for four. I want them to believe in themselves, to test themselves, and to learn to succeed to their own standards. And I don’t know if I’ve pushed them forward or under the damned Mommy bus. (sigh)

Meanwhile, it’s time to go tutor and do laundry and reassure the dog that the thunder is not going to come inside the house and eat him up. And if I’ve really screwed things up, maybe I at least managed to teach them to forgive their mom.

The Last Sock In the Nerd Hamper

I’ve put off posting for a while because of a whole crapload of reasons, most of which are boring, even to me. So, I’ll just jump right in…

I think you should know that writing about, or even discussing, being gifted is something I Don’t Do very often. It’s right up there, in my categorization of social skills, with asking an attractive person of the opposite sex, whom you just met an hour ago, to take a look at the fungus on your privates to see if he knows what it might be and how to cure it. It doesn’t fit into my southern upbringing, which prioritizes good humor and humility, and I have found that talking about being gifted often changes the way people treat me. I have to trust that you will take it in stride and continue to be the same person you were to me previously, or that you’ll have the courtesy to ask me whatever questions you want to ask and then move the heck on, which is what I mostly do about it myself.

So, here’s that last socially smelly sock at the bottom of my nerd hamper -- I’m a member of Mensa. I’ve been a member for over 15 years, and I like it. I’m not particularly active, but I still like being a member. And I don’t tell people about it hardly ever, I don’t list it on my resume unless I have good reason to believe that the person reviewing that resume will respond positively, and I simply don’t consider it any different from other groups that I belong to, each of which has a focus of some sort, and which have specialized journals and jargons pertaining to the interests of the group.

There are usually two groups of responses to finding out I’m in Mensa (if you have come to know this outside my “friendship/trust” framework) – a) competitiveness –to prove you are as gifted or more so than I am and that you’re worthy of my respect and appreciation, and consequently elevating both me and Mensa to a position way beyond what we deserve based on name recognition alone, and b) denigration - that you don’t think it means anything, but you’re going to shoot me down anyway, if not directly, then by making a lot of dunning remarks about Mensa. I categorize both reactions as “the 142nd fastest gun in the West” responses, humorous and completely unnecessary.

Because being in Mensa, or being gifted, is like being the 142nd Fastest Gun in the West; it’s not a particularly unique position, from a standpoint of the number of qualifying persons, it is only significant in the great pool of large statistical numbers, and there really is no point in challenging me to either prove my worth or convince me of yours, or to pointlessly jab and slash at anyone who’s gifted. It’s just a state of being; I was not given a choice about being gifted, any more than I was given a choice about being born female, American, or right-handed, and I like all those things about myself, too.

And, Mensa is not what it’s perceived to be. I’m sure that if you look hard enough you’ll find members who want to tell you their IQ and the IQ of everyone else, or at least their estimates thereof, and there are plenty of people in any group, Mensa or otherwise, who have the answers to all the world’s problems, whether anyone wants to listen to them or not. There are also plenty of droners. Mensa does not exist to consult with governments or create life from household chemicals for corporations or just for fun. It’s a social support group for smart people who need a social support group of other smart people. That’s all.

There are great conversations, witty ripostes, truly competitive games and puzzles, varying levels of expertise in a surprisingly dizzying array of people from all walks of life in all kinds of topics, and a group joke about chocolate. And there are “problem children” – people who have too much hair, adipose tissue, religion, arrogance, mental illness, or simple strangeness, or too little of something from more categories than I can mention. All of which has the effect of making it a great cauldron of tolerance, as well as being a social support group.

Public bias has mistakenly confused giftedness with superiority, much as it confuses wealth with happiness. Each is completely independent of and very, very different from the other, regardless of some superficial similarities. Consequently, I hear and read somewhat laughable commentary about how incredibly smart Mensans are, and how arrogant they must be, and what’s it like to have all that brainpower in one place, and what are they up to (as if meetings were concerned with creating new stealth bombs). Some of the commentary is extremely complimentary (and, often, quite off base) and other comments are envious (and also off base). Newspaper articles tend to poke fun at Mensans for not being what the writer wanted them to be (dry, humorless, pontificating physicists with excess eyebrow hair, judging from the articles I’ve read).

I suppose the best analogy for a Mensa meeting that I could make would be:

Suppose you and 20 of your favorite college professors and high school teachers and a couple of other people you think are interesting, all go off for a buffet dinner, free bar, and decide, at 11 p.m. at night, to go out fishing. There you are, full of good cheer, on a boat, trying not to snag each other’s eyelids as you cast your lines, and talking about God only knows what while you wait for something to bite.

You can hear your history professor and your best friend, a hairdresser who reads Proust during slow times in the salon, heatedly debating current politics behind your left shoulder. Your Calculus teacher and your uncle, a janitor at Lockheed, are discussing the merits of Portuguese gourmet cuisine behind your right shoulder. Your English professor is busy trying not to be seasick over the stern and singing dirty ditties in Olde Englische between belches, all by her lonesome.

The Captain, poor slob, is bitching up a storm at some malfunctioning mechanical bits, which, by listening carefully, you realize that you personally can fix. You hand your rod to your son, who is arguing in French with your former Microbiology professor about science fiction authors, and head over to bang wrenches with the Captain. You’re joined by three engineers, none of whom are the slightest bit helpful, and all of whom spend most of the time disagreeing with each other. When someone breaks out the slide rules, you know it’s gotten ugly. Fortunately, the engine runs again, and you do make it back to shore. There are no fish, but everyone had a great time.


So, if you think Mensa is a group ego fest, it’s not. It’s also not the greatest problem-solving organization, and it’s not a gathering place for the great, the somber, the emotionally sober, or even the particularly enviable. It is a social support group for smart people who need somewhere to go and let down their guards and just be themselves, whether it involves being overtly smart or not. Lots of people already have those support groups in their daily lives, and they don’t join Mensa because they have no need to do so. Some of the rest of us do.

Like most groups, Mensa does do spiffy things – scholarships, community service, colloquia of interest, research, etc., and there are publications, smaller sub-groups, and a variety of activities based on interest and willingness to participate. More info at the main website here: http://www.us.mensa.org//AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home


Me, I’m off to do laundry and not think about this topic any more for now. Although I’m pretty sure I’ll need some chocolate to get over it. ; )

Nerdliness Further…

It’s a snowy day, of the type that used to be typical for our area – school’s been called off because we’re expecting several inches of snow, the wind is treacherous, and drifting makes driving extremely hazardous. Temperatures are expected to drop into the sub-zero range tonight. Good thing I knit!

I am, therefore, at home with a full complement of nerd offspring, namely, my own kids. I didn’t set out to make them smart, I didn’t do anything in particular other than love them and read to them and talk to them and play with them and holler at them and drag them to the park. I gave them books of their own and let them read mine, too, and all that other Mom stuff.

But, nevertheless, they turned out smart. Go figure.

I suppose the reason I’m revisiting my own past is because my children are going through similar situations to those in my history. All three of them are having issues from being gifted, some good and some bad. That sends me scouting back through my memory to see what I can dredge up to help, assist, use for advice, find to investigate further to deal with their situations, and so forth.

I know they have it easier on the home front – this is an unabashedly intellectual household. You’ll trip over books, not footballs, in our rooms, and visiting adults have been stunned speechless when one of my kids wanders through with a polysyllabic question on literature or science or mathematics. I didn’t have that kind of a household as a kid – no books, but at least there was no scorn for being bright.

Schools are different. I grew up on the east coast, where intellectualism is tolerated and even celebrated to a greater degree. Possibly the most significant time of my teen years was when I attended the precursor to what is now known as the Thomas Jefferson School for Science and Technology. Back then, in the mid-seventies, it was a school for the gifted within a regular school. We were segregated out with separate teachers; separate gifted only classes, a separate lunch hour, a separate locker area, and so on. We could, if we wanted to, participate in sports, theater, various clubs, and classes which were not on the gifted curriculum.

The director, a fantastic man who “gets it” had rounded up gifted teens from a variety of feeder schools, and, along with the kids who were being bused for racial integration purposes, the gifted kids were being sent to the same school, regardless of home school district. It was a brilliant maneuver, and timed well for public acceptance. It worked out well for me, too.

I remember my interview with him. He sat behind a large, scarred wooden desk, and I slouched unhappily in my chair. I’d just been through a series of years where there was some light for smart kids, which dimmed over time, then thrown back into the soup with other students who were actively hostile towards anyone who showed a glimmer of above-average intelligence. I was told I was in honors classes, and I was bored shitless in them. The teachers couldn’t keep up with my questions and asked me to tone it down again. I got spat on for acing tests, shoved into lockers for getting fed up and shooting verbal insults at bullies, and socially shunned for “making others look bad” by knowing the answers in class or turning in work that I was happy with, which, incidentally turned out to be used as examples by teachers in several classes.

There is no way to tell the above without it sounding like bragging to someone who hasn’t been through it. Let me assure you, it is not bragging. I’m not proud, nor am I pleased, nor do I feel superior to the other kids I went to school with. I just wanted to be myself without my performance being taken as a hostile act towards others. I am who I am because it is what I am and it has nothing to do with anyone else unless they choose to read hostility or aggression into it.

I also, as an aside, have always loathed the implication that I am openly smart in order to shame or humiliate someone else. I am openly smart because it is who I am and there is no reason to hide, mask, or cover it up. I’m not cruising through life looking for people to run over. It is insecure people who waste their time hating gifted folks. I did not become gifted at someone else’s expense.

So, I was cynical. I figured he was going to try to sell me another line of “you’ll be challenged in OUR honors classes” which is always a huge lie. I assumed that at some point one of the school counselors was going to do what they always do, and try to take charge of my gift and tell me what to do with it, and then chide and deride me when I expressed other opinions about what ought to be done with the matter between my ears.

His opening line was predictable, “This is a new program for gifted students here, and it is not going to be like any program you’ve been in before,” he said. What followed was very, very different and got my attention. He told me that I would be challenged, and he said, “possibly for the first time since you started school.” He said that I would no longer have to put up with a day filled with wasted time, bad teachers, abusive fellow students, or stupid assignments. He literally said, “stupid” assignments.

I looked at him and said, “No more ‘What I Did On My Summer Vacation’ essays?” He smiled, a wide, charming grin and said, “No. Not under any circumstances.” And then he won my conditional trust by leaning across the desk, stabbing it emphatically with his finger as he said, “And if one of my teachers does give you a stupid assignment, I want you to come and tell me about it. Don’t be afraid to speak up and tell me. I need to know because I will NOT have it. Will you do that?” I said “OK” and he looked me in the eye and asked me if I was willing to join his gifted program.

I asked again, “No stupid assignments?” “No,” he said, “none. Tell me if you think you’ve been given one. You may still have to do that one until I can come up with an alternative, but I will make sure that there are no more.” I liked that he was realistic and honest. Still not believing what I’d heard, I asked, “No more wasted time?” And he looked at me, with compassion and understanding and stern resolution, as someone who understands what purgatory it is to the heart and soul of a gifted child who has spent 6.3 of every 7 hours in school for 10 straight years, waiting for others to catch up, and he said, “No. I will not waste your time. No one here will waste your time ever again.” I took a deep breath and said, “OK, I’d like to do it.” He smiled and said, “Good. Be ready to work hard on the first day.” And we smiled at each other like co-conspirators.

He did get it. He really, really got it. It was, in fact, a school for gifted teens. Everyone else in my classes was smart as hell, and those who had gotten there on high-achievement or because of pushy parents soon chose to move to a different series of classes. We worked hard, we laughed together, we were our own community, we didn’t care what the rest of the school thought because for the first time in a long time, there were plenty of us, all in one place at one time, with one purpose – to learn what we wanted to learn as fast as we wanted to learn it.

It was a new experience for the teachers, too, having a full day of gifted students and having to develop lesson plans that outstripped several years of teaching mainstream students. We found out that we weren’t each going to continue being the best student in all our classes, and rather than that being cause for upset, it was a huge relief. Finally, there was someone better than each of us at something, someone to ask questions of, a worthy study buddy, a peer to admire and respect for accomplishments that deserved it.

We had some hitches, and I had to make good on my promise to the director. Our English teacher assigned us “My Favorite Holiday” as an essay preparatory to a debate contest. Every other assignment in that class had been deep, serious, clever, interesting, but this one was just not right. I protested in class and several of the other students joined in, a wonderfully unique experience in and of itself, agreeing that they were told they wouldn’t get any of these types of assignments either. The teacher was flustered and told us to do it anyway. We did, and I left a message for the director, who was out of town.

I did mine in protest, choosing the dumbest, most ludicrous holiday I could think of, Groundhog Day. I knew all about Punxsutawney Phil before he hit the big time. I got a B because even I, digging through the library, couldn’t find enough information or create enough verbiage to stretch a Groundhog Day essay to three pages.

The director came back after the assignment had been handed in, graded, and handed back. (In those days, that was the remainder of the week.) I took my paper down to show him. I walked into his office and handed it to him, without saying a word. He asked me if I was upset about the grade. I said that I was not, and I asked him to look at the title. I could see his face change as he read each word – at “My” he sat forward in his chair, at “Favorite” his jaw tightened and he started to grimace, and at “Holiday” he stood up and said, in a very angry voice, “I don’t BELIEVE it!” He was shaking, and either he was a hell of an actor, or he was truly angry. He took a couple of deep breaths, and said, “I’ll take care of this. Thank you for coming and letting me know.” I left, feeling like I had finally found a school official I could trust.

He followed, through, too. The teacher tried to read me the riot act and I stood right in the hallway and gave it back. I told her I didn’t care about the grade, I just didn’t want to waste my time on any more dumb assignments, that I would do whatever work she expected as long it I was learning something of value from it. And I reminded her that I was promised no more stupid work. She was purple with anger, but she said “FINE” and stomped off. Some of my classmates bought me lunch and thanked me. No one blew me any shit.

And we all relaxed and learned to trust again because we were finally home. This was were we could take off the blinders, stretch out our necks and run like we’d always wanted to run because now there were people clearing the track in front of us to make sure we neither stumbled nor crushed anyone inadvertently, nor ran off the track. It was a blissful, rewarding, unique, and wonderful period.

I did have to leave before graduating high school. My home situation became dangerous again, and leaving was possibly the hardest decision of my life. I didn’t want to leave the school that I had waited for all my life; I cried and cried and cried. I had to go though, or there was a significant chance I wouldn’t see graduation day at any school, so I did.

I moved to Chicago, and life has rolled on. But I have gifted children, and I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it is not weird, or wrong, or a hostile act to be gifted. I know that the problems gifted children have socializing tend to evaporate overnight when they are with their intellectual peers, that there is a very large body of crap pop psychology and pabulum that states that “everyone is gifted” and that G & T programs are elitist and that gifted kids are always snobby and arrogant and act superior. I have heard it all, I have lived a serious majority of it, and I can smell the crap of it from a mile away.

The public school system has no collective idea of how to deal with educating gifted children. Individual teachers may, magnet schools may and often do, but by and large, gifted children are still waiting for others to catch up, and dreading that they will spend the rest of their lives waiting, too.

I have never wanted that for my children. I have asked them every year if they want to be home schooled, if they’d like me to seek out a gifted school where they might need to live away from home, if they’d like me to do anything in particular to make their educational experience better. Most of the time, we have worked around the problems, or they have learned to deal with them, or they have chosen to deal with them. I’ve tried to show them the options, and above all, I have let them know that there is nothing wrong with them. I have offered them the hope of college classrooms, which is where most gifted children are finally able to be the rest of themselves without shame or embarrassment or threats.

And, most of all, I have worked to make sure they have a home where is it safe, and where it is normal to be as smart as you want to be, all the time. Gifted children need to be able to come all the way home, too.

Five Things My Husband Never Expected...

...When He Married a Smart Chick

1. Books Everywhere: Lots of them. Lots of alternate reading materials, too. There is not one single room in the house without a stack of books. This includes bathrooms, the basement, the laundry room, the garage, the kitchen, and a few other places I have hidden books out of sheer embarrassment after realizing I have TOO MANY books. If I’m going to come clean, I may as well come really clean and admit that I have not yet succeeded in paring the sheer quantity of books down to where I can store all of them in the usual places, as opposed to just everywhere.

I know that some people, when they hear “lots of books” think of old English libraries with leather bindings and comfy chairs. That would not describe my books. I read in bed, on the couch, in the bathroom, while waiting for the washer to fill, while knitting, while cooking, and while decompressing after driving somewhere. I read when I brush my teeth and as much as possible when exercising. They are paperbacks, softbacks, hard cover, truly ratty ones of each type, and the occasional overgrown pamphlet. They are in all types of condition, most with covers and some with the cover worn completely off. I don’t really care, since I don’t “collect” them, I read them. If all the words are there, then they’re just fine to me.

Hubs is not a big reader, and at first he really couldn’t understand why I wound up with so many books. I don’t know if he understands it yet, but he accepts it at least.

2. Really Smart Kids: I’m not really sure what kind of kids my husband expected. Probably kids who were more like he was as a child – gear heads, constantly playing pranks that were sometimes dangerous or ill-advised, kids who ran all over the neighborhood playing kickball and trying to paste things on pets or something. A very snarky part of me is thinking that if he wanted that kind of kid, he should have spent more time with them when they were little. Instead, he got mini BoS kids. They have enormous vocabularies and aren’t shy about sharing.

When Bunny was a tiny, tiny tot and came into our bedroom during a thunderstorm, she woke us up by saying “WAKE UP! I’m frightened!” I replied, groggily, “huhn?” She whacked me with her stuffed rainbow trout pillow and said, “FRIGHTENED. You know, it means ‘scared’.” I’m pretty sure my husband slapped his hand to his forehead and groaned out, “Oh, God, not another one,” before going back to sleep.

Then there was the dinner incident with Spawn, several months before he started kindergarten. He had taught himself to read with those wonderful Disney books on tape and lots of being read to by Mom, and there he sat at the dinner table while Bunny threw chicken skin to the dog. His legs were swinging to and fro, far above the floor, and he was loading corn onto his plate like there would never be any more. He looked at his Dad and asked, “What’s a chalice?” Hubs stopped with a mouthful of chicken and looked at him in astonishment. “A what?” he asked. “A chalice,” replied Spawn, waiting for an answer. They both looked at me. “A goblet type drinking vessel,” I replied. “Oh, OK, thanks,” said Spawn and went back to packing his maw with corn.

Hubs gave me the look. The “I can’t believe these are children, and how the hell did you know that, and why does he want to know???” look.

I answered the look, “He’s been reading the Grimm’s Unabridged Fairy Tales book,” I said, “How far have you gotten, Spawn?” “I’m done. I just wasn’t sure what a chalice was,” he replied.

3. Strange Food: I am adventurous with food and have been for as long as I can remember. When we first got married, my husband liked things from boxes, bags and cans, and anything that needed to be sectioned, stewed, or didn’t have some component with a copyright label on it was not actually edible in his opinion. I think this might really have been due to the fact that his parents were the same way, but he blames my food adventures it on my curious mind.

I admit, I’ve made some mistakes. The raisin and rice stuffing was a disaster, especially when the turkey had not completely defrosted. I had a few mutant cakes until I got a stand mixer. Some of my homemade candy attempts were questionable, however, I’ve always been pretty good at soup. Hubs does not believe that soup from something other than a can really counts as soup.

For example, early in our marriage, I found out that hubs likes Scotch Broth. He wanted it from a can. I’d never had it before, so I tried it and liked it. Naturally, to me, that meant I read the ingredients label, eliminated everything of the preservative nature, and tried to replicate it. The first night was lamb stew, which was kind of heavy and hubs only ate a dab of it. The next night, it was thick lamb soup, and by the third night, it tasted just like (insert famous canned soup maker name) Scotch Broth to me. He said the lamb chunks were too big and there were too many vegetables.

So, next time it looked like soup weather, I made chili. Nope, no good, not from a can. Also not acceptable were the homemade chicken noodle, the homemade chicken and rice, the homemade minestrone, the homemade oyster stew (which also got a thumbs down because it had FISH stuff in it), and clam chowder got ruled out before I even had a chance to make it.

We duked it out, sort of, compromising with the occasional foray into stuff I can’t stand intermingled with stuff he can’t stand. Then we had kids, and they liked the stuff I cooked. He knew he needed to set a good example, so he would, manfully and with good cheer, eat chicken stew with home made dumplings, and broccoli. He has tried curried chicken, but he draws the line at things in aspic and frou-frou girly salads. He even tried bouillabaisse, didn’t like it, but decided to try it. He has found out that his friends envy him his homemade dinners and tasty, fresh foods. They complain about only getting stuff from boxes and bags and cans.

4. Really Smart Kids – Part Two: When smart kids take standardized tests, they get outstanding scores. I never truly realized that there are few students who routinely score in the 99th percentile until my kids started bringing high scores home, and hubs reacted to them. He wanted to celebrate, to give them things for doing such a great job. I pointed out to him that they didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, they were just themselves. I think he felt like I had taken the wind out of his sails. I told him to be as happy for them as he wanted to be, but to understand that this is part of the way they are, and that making too big a deal out of it might spook them or cause them to be smug or arrogant.

When Spawn’s ACT and PSAT results came in, hubs sat down in the living room, mouth agape and said, “I’ve never heard of anyone getting a score like this before.” I took a couple of deep breaths and replied, “I did,” and just looked at him. “These are going to open a lot of doors for him,” he said. “Yes,” I said. Hubs looked at me for a very long moment. “Thank you,” he said. “You’re welcome,” I answered.

5. The Yarn Thing Run Amok: I have to try everything. My curiosity is a rampaging, ravaging beast, and that extends to yarn stuff. I have probably got at least one of every size knitting needle made, and one skein each of a significant percentage of the yarn obtainable in the US today.

It took a few years before my yarn monster showed up – I was working and didn’t have much time to knit, and it wasn’t in vogue, and sometimes I just get tired of explaining why I like the things I like. Hubs was a little surprised when he found out I knew how to knit and crochet. He was really surprised when he found out how well and how quickly I could knit and crochet. He was even more surprised when I started buying yarn in afghan-sized lots.

I don’t think hubs expected to find half-finished projects in every major room in the house. He does like the extra-long afghans to cover his feet while he’s watching TV, and he loves his balaclava and wool socks for when he’s using the snow blower.

He’s actually been pretty nice about the whole knitting thing – he likes seeing the kids in hand made sweaters, hats, mittens, etc., and he thinks they were extra cute when they were little, rolling around in the snow in a rainbow of colors. I don’t think he expected so very much yarn and so very many knitted things, though.

Coming Out of the Nerd Closet

I have been a nerd since at least age 12, possibly longer, but that’s all I can swear to for certain. I was that annoying kid with the spring-loaded arm who always knew the answer to everything any teacher ever asked, ever thought about asking, or ever heard asked by someone else. I made the other nerds in my honors classes feel ashamed of their inferior brand of nerdliness, except occasionally in Calculus, when I did get out-nerded a few times. It only made me study harder.

I’ve worn glasses since I was 10 years old, and I wish I had had them sooner. Finding out that trees had leaves from a distance, too, instead of being fuzzy green blobs, made the whole world brand new (!) in an especially doofy and nerdly way. And, as the universe knows no humor bounds, I am pretty uncoordinated when it comes to gross motor skills, and I consequently suck at sports. I especially suck at projectile sports, which also has to do with being a glasses-wearer back when kids got one pair, and no matter how broken they got, you wore them and the surgical or electrical tape that was holding them together to school (and church, and shopping, and playing with friends) until the optometrist said you needed new lenses.

I liked learning the way shipwrecked castaways like hot baths, cooked food, cold drinks, and fluffy beds. There was never enough; I could never learn enough about anything; I always had more questions; there was always something new to learn, read about, study up on, do exercises or problems on, and experts in the topic to be contacted and consulted. I had, and still have, a bottomless cup of curiosity, a voracious appetite for learning, reading, studying, collecting information.

I didn’t realize how peculiar this made me in the world at large until I was in about 7th grade. Prior to that, back in the haze of my childhood, I had the luxury of having mostly outstanding teachers. Yes, I had a few duds, and I remember them, but even the duds didn’t make me feel like a weirdo, they just made me dislike them.

Anyway, it wasn’t until I was in junior high school that I realized most other kids were not like me. They were just warming seats and learning the least they had to to keep their parents and their teachers off their backs. They didn’t show up with a sense of excitement and anticipation to school, they showed up to bitch and moan with other like types about how “boring” it all was (like they were going to be rock stars at age 13 if they weren’t forced to be in school or something) and how much of a waste of their time it was.

It happened when I was interrogating a teacher ruthlessly about a book where the class was reading chapter by chapter, and I had, as was my habit, already read the book twice and written pencil answers (as opposed to the all-important PEN answers for handing in!) to all the accompanying questions. She got fed up and said, with force and irritation, “WE’RE NOT THERE YET, and you’re going to have to WAIT for the rest of the class to catch up.” From the far side of the classroom came an anonymous voice, “Yeah, do you have to be such a total dork?” which made the rest of the class laugh.

And, suddenly, I was all alone; and for the first time in my public school life, I knew it, really knew it, and I felt under attack, desolated, shamed, demeaned, and abandoned. I had, by the force of my enthusiasm, vast curiosity, and personal drive, made myself a laughingstock, an outsider. I had been rejected by my society and my treasured authority figures on a deeply personal level. Publicly. I was marooned a thousand miles away from everyone else in that classroom, and they were glad I was gone.

It was very hard not to cry. But I didn’t. I just shut down. I closed my book, I put away my papers quietly, and I did as I had been told to do. I waited for the rest of them to catch up. In the rest of my classes that day, I waited for the rest of them to catch up; silently, in shame and embarrassment, I waited for them to catch up.

I waited for someone else to answer questions in science class, my favorite class, and I kept my hands on my desk and my head down and tried not to cry. When the teacher finally got fed up with waiting for someone to answer her question, she called on me, and I whispered out the answer. I made it as short as possible, so as not to give the other students any ammunition to shoot me with again. That was so out of character that my science teacher asked me if I was OK, I nodded and looked down at my desk again and kept my eyes on my desktop. Before the end of class, she came over and asked me if anything was wrong. I just peeked at her quickly and shook my head. She was not convinced.

I don’t know how many days I stayed silent and withdrawn in school, or how many nights I quietly cried while I did my homework. It had stopped being fun, it had stopped being interesting, and instead of being somewhere I liked to go, school became somewhere I tried to not get insulted and beat up on. And I waited for everyone else to catch up, hour after hour, day after day, over and over and over and over and over. I could have slept until I got called on and still have gotten the right answer. I could have written the test answers with my pen in my mouth and one eye glued shut and still have smoked the rest of the class. Sometimes, it wasn’t worth getting out of bed for, and I didn’t.

The only teachers who worried were my math and science teachers. To all the rest of them, I had stopped being a problem with my questions and my curiosity and my hyper-accelerated performance, and everything was “just fine” as I sat there dying inside, wishing with all my heart that there was somewhere in the world for kids like me – kids who worked hard because they liked it, who learned and studied and found it rewarding and fun and endlessly exciting… Somewhere where being like me was normal.

I didn’t go to school for 2 weeks at one point, and a truant officer showed up at my house. When my mom got home from work, I had to tell her about it because she had to sign a paper. She just looked at me, signed the paper, and asked me what was going on. I told her the kids had made fun of me for being smart. She was speechless, literally speechless. I went up to my room and stared out the window, wishing I were dead, or missing, or living in Algeria, or a frog, or anything other than myself. Mom made dinner.

I knew she’d want to talk to me after dinner, and she did. I knew what her first question would be, and I was right. She asked, “Didn’t the teacher do anything?” I told her that the teacher was the one who started it, and repeated the events to her. I saw the shock waves go through her, I saw the rage go ballistic within her, and for the first time in our mutual history, I was not afraid of her rage because I could tell it was not directed at me. She became very terse and brisk. “Go to bed,” she said, “and get your clothes ready to go back to school tomorrow.”

My mom and I have always had and always will have a difficult history together. The dynamics changed shortly after my twelfth birthday, and, maybe someday I’ll talk about it here. In the year and a half between then and our discussion, we had spent most of our time staying out of each other’s way. But, for once, my mother came through for me.

The next morning, I got dressed, waited for the bus and went to school. I got the usual pointless and inapplicable warnings about having fallen “very far behind” in my first class, looked over the assignment list and realized I could do it in an evening and resigned myself to an endless series of days of waiting for everyone else to catch up.

As I headed to my second class, I saw every teacher I had hustling down the hallway towards the office like there was a fire drill without the bell. That got my attention for a moment. It took a while for a teacher to show up for my second class, and it wound up being a regular teacher who was going between our room and her own room, just to keep order. It was the same way during my third class. Something was up, and even my classmates were wondering aloud what it might be. I didn’t care that much. I figured there was going to be a teacher strike or something political was happening. Then it was lunchtime, and I got to see some of my friends, who had been worried about me, and I cheered up a little.

Fourth class was Home Ec. Our regular teacher was there, and she had an announcement. She fixed the worst slackers in the class in the eye and said, “I want each and every one of you to know that there will be no more picking on smart kids. There is nothing wrong with being smart, there is nothing wrong with asking questions, there is nothing wrong with working ahead, and the first one of you who pulls that kind of a stunt in MY class room is going to go right past suspension and be expelled. Is that clear?”

My head shot up, and my mouth fell open. I looked at my Home Ec. teacher in astonishment, and while the other students were complaining and sneaking glances at me, she and I made definite eye contact. I quirked an eyebrow, and she gave a tiny nod and an even tinier quick smile. Then she brought the class to order and we did whatever we were supposed to be doing. I don’t remember; I was in shock. I thanked her as I left class at the end of the period. She patted me on the shoulder and said, “don’t worry anymore.”

For each of my remaining classes, every teacher made the same or a similar announcement. Some of them were pretty fired up and emotional themselves, some were clearly resentful at having been called on the carpet, and some of them were mad as hell on my behalf, and, presumably on behalf of all the other kids who were living in silent desperation as well. Some of them openly looked at me and told me to tell them if I had so much as a single complaint about being picked on; that they weren’t going to stand for bullying for a minute.

My science teacher just about boiled the paint right off the walls, she was so mad. She really let loose at the bullies and the slackers and told them they needed to emulate smart kids, not bully them, that they were going to be raking leaves and washing the cars of the smart kids if they didn’t get their heads in gear and get in the game, and so on. It was a rant of quite magnificent scope and duration, at the end of which she said to me, “don’t ever stop asking questions, don’t ever stop wanting to know more, don’t let anyone make you ashamed of being smart ever again!” I burst into grateful tears, and so did a tiny little, wispy blond girl with coke-bottle glasses, buckteeth and braces who sat two seats behind me. She and I looked at each other and smiled through our tears. We both said, very loudly, “Thank you!” (We eventually became best friends.)

It continued the next day with the first three teachers, too. One of them was the teacher who had told me I’d have to “wait”, and she was red-eyed and pissed off at me, but she made the same announcement. She quit teaching at my school at the end of that year.

By the end of the week, I wasn’t the only nerd feeling safe and protected and appreciated in the school. There were quite a few of us meeting, talking, and getting to know each other in the lunch room, in the front seats of classrooms, in the library, dragging our enormous loads of books from class to class. Instead of drooping along in the hallways, trying our best to be invisible, we took over the main pathways and acted like we finally belonged.

My mother hadn’t said a thing until Friday night after dinner. She asked me how things were going at school. I said, with a very big smile, that they were very different now, and I told her what had happened. She looked at me, nodded, and said, “good.” I thanked her.

I’d like to tell you that my junior high school became a renowned nerd haven, but it didn’t. It did become a lot more conducive to academic competitiveness and good-natured, high-speed learning, which is more than most schools do. My nerd friends and I were excited by the change, happy to feel safe, and able to enjoy being ourselves again. It was a good thing.

There is more to my nerd tale, but this seems like enough for today.