things that were wrong with me as a child
few people get how deep mynueroses lie. the big one, the one that affects all others is that I am retarded. People laugh when I tell them this, but that may just be to make me feel better. I believe that I am mentally deficient, by which i mean that i could be autistic, posess some mild degree of cerebal palsy, been born with a brain retardation, anything.)
I believe that I am retarded and that everyone else is humoring me.
It's hard to refute. I keep finding myself in jobs that are either
a) artistic and completely subjective, one day i'll have thought i've finally made it as a photographer and find all my prints hanging prominently in the outsider part of the gallery
or
b) manual labor, construction, set building, house painting, anything that requires me to move thing a to place b and get back
perhaps the first job i've had that, on the surface level, requires any brain activity would be tutoring math classes but to be honest, I'm sure a well-spoken, conservatively dressed monkey could explain a cryptarhythm as well as I can just the same as he can move a box or press a button on a camera or turntable
perhaps the depressed women of chicago have so run out of hope that they're willing to bed a mongoloid who's not completely obese and has good taste in music
hell, women sleep with Ace, the wheelchair bound standup comic wth mild palsy who Mancow lets on the air to abuse every now and then (and those women he meets as inexplicable club VIP may very well have better self esteem than anyone i'v ever dated) he has more notches in his left armrest than i will ever carve in any bed i'll ever own
this fear mostly goes back to grade school when i needed a lawyer. luckily, my father happens to be a lawyer so he was able to act as my attorney against the Chicago Public Schools and more specifically Stone Academy, who did not want to pay for my LD classes. LD used to stand for Learning Disabled but progressives far too left for their own (or anybody else's) good have changed it to mean Learning DIFFERENCE.
mine wasn't just ADHD. I was, of course, and a few years before it was in vogue and every boy who didn't excel in sports-or did far too well- got a bottle of Ritalin thrown his way but the meat of my problem was a sensory motor dysfunction.
what that means was that my HANDS and my EYES were BOTH fucked, within the confines of my brain
the kind i have, for some reason, usually dwells within smart artistic kids, which is why they didn't want to hire extra faculty to work with me. I didn't have a lisp or a stutter, I wasn't English as a Second Language, I was just weird, off. And i was the only one. Not to mention, I was "gifted". When I didn't have to read the board, the teachers couldn't keep up with me. Or the other students couldn't, forcing the teachers to teach down. I got loud and was often whaped on the arms. if it was just this, i would've been fine. i would've preserved to not leave the class and let the other kids all know full well where I was going. The problem is they did know. Kids can smell that type a shit for miles and i gave them a number of clues, most of which related back to hypersensitivity.
Hypersensitivity tends to come with really bad cases of Attention Deficit Disorder. Literally, you feel things too much. I could not sit still for a haircut. It was torturous, not just because of the sitting still but because each tug at my hair felt like it was all being yanked and ripped out of my head. I couldn't open my eyes under water (still can't). I couldn't take showers (and hated to lay still for baths). I couldn't stand the feel of itchy sweaters denim so I wore sweatpants. Because of the sensory motor disorder I couldn't tie my shoes and never learned to ride a bike.
Now forget about what you know about me. look back to the school you went to when you were 8. Picture a chubby (husky) jewish kid with a bowl cut, wearing sweat pants and velcro shoes. He hasn't bathed in a couple days and likes to spout random shit to amuse himself in class (i still do that last one). Now tell me that he's not retarded.
I felt retarded because I was treated like I was retarded. It wasn't just the boys who called me retard, but the teachers like Mrs. Weaver who scapegoated me whenever something went wrong; it was social workers who would ask me very slowly which one of the pictures was a "tri yayne gull". I'm retarded godammit, not an imbecile! "Can you bounce this ball?" Of course I can bounce the damn ball! I'm a little boy, that's all I want to do with my life.
I feel that way at college, perhaps because I go to shitty colleges. i've made it through 4 years at Columbia without ever really getting any real criticism on my work(and not very much praise, either). Today a teacher flunked me because I didn't really 'get it' and-mixed in with the depression- felt a swell of pride that she failed me because she figured I could get it if I took it again. I was lazy, not hopeless. I showed...ugh...potential (I always have and have always hated it)
People tend to ask how I grew out of it. I didn't. Maybe the hand-eye coordination stuff improved with Nintendo. That IS how I convinced my parents to buy the 8-bits that connected me to every other boy my age in America. The rest of the stuff, I had to make a jump, And that all happened in sixth grade. Around 92, 93 I had only a loose concept of what getting laid was (like what body parts went where...or sometimes there...but how?), but i knew enough to know that I never would in velcro and sweat pants. I want to go shopping! Teach me how to tie my shoes!
That was the one and only time I went to the Gap. I got some Cross Colours t-shirts and some flannel, because I really wasn't sure if I was black...or maybe 'grunge' or something. Jeans were weird and uncomfortable, and I wasn't able to get used to them as quickly as I had the imitation-Nike sneaks, but the next day both Katherine Rekkas (another depressed, soon-to-be extremely well developed young nerd I would 'date' in 8th grade) and Alfredo (whose older brother was, like, totally getting him into the Latin Kings and had, like, totally seen all this porno) told me i looked good, and I knew I was on the right track.
I believe that I am retarded and that everyone else is humoring me.
It's hard to refute. I keep finding myself in jobs that are either
a) artistic and completely subjective, one day i'll have thought i've finally made it as a photographer and find all my prints hanging prominently in the outsider part of the gallery
or
b) manual labor, construction, set building, house painting, anything that requires me to move thing a to place b and get back
perhaps the first job i've had that, on the surface level, requires any brain activity would be tutoring math classes but to be honest, I'm sure a well-spoken, conservatively dressed monkey could explain a cryptarhythm as well as I can just the same as he can move a box or press a button on a camera or turntable
perhaps the depressed women of chicago have so run out of hope that they're willing to bed a mongoloid who's not completely obese and has good taste in music
hell, women sleep with Ace, the wheelchair bound standup comic wth mild palsy who Mancow lets on the air to abuse every now and then (and those women he meets as inexplicable club VIP may very well have better self esteem than anyone i'v ever dated) he has more notches in his left armrest than i will ever carve in any bed i'll ever own
this fear mostly goes back to grade school when i needed a lawyer. luckily, my father happens to be a lawyer so he was able to act as my attorney against the Chicago Public Schools and more specifically Stone Academy, who did not want to pay for my LD classes. LD used to stand for Learning Disabled but progressives far too left for their own (or anybody else's) good have changed it to mean Learning DIFFERENCE.
mine wasn't just ADHD. I was, of course, and a few years before it was in vogue and every boy who didn't excel in sports-or did far too well- got a bottle of Ritalin thrown his way but the meat of my problem was a sensory motor dysfunction.
what that means was that my HANDS and my EYES were BOTH fucked, within the confines of my brain
the kind i have, for some reason, usually dwells within smart artistic kids, which is why they didn't want to hire extra faculty to work with me. I didn't have a lisp or a stutter, I wasn't English as a Second Language, I was just weird, off. And i was the only one. Not to mention, I was "gifted". When I didn't have to read the board, the teachers couldn't keep up with me. Or the other students couldn't, forcing the teachers to teach down. I got loud and was often whaped on the arms. if it was just this, i would've been fine. i would've preserved to not leave the class and let the other kids all know full well where I was going. The problem is they did know. Kids can smell that type a shit for miles and i gave them a number of clues, most of which related back to hypersensitivity.
Hypersensitivity tends to come with really bad cases of Attention Deficit Disorder. Literally, you feel things too much. I could not sit still for a haircut. It was torturous, not just because of the sitting still but because each tug at my hair felt like it was all being yanked and ripped out of my head. I couldn't open my eyes under water (still can't). I couldn't take showers (and hated to lay still for baths). I couldn't stand the feel of itchy sweaters denim so I wore sweatpants. Because of the sensory motor disorder I couldn't tie my shoes and never learned to ride a bike.
Now forget about what you know about me. look back to the school you went to when you were 8. Picture a chubby (husky) jewish kid with a bowl cut, wearing sweat pants and velcro shoes. He hasn't bathed in a couple days and likes to spout random shit to amuse himself in class (i still do that last one). Now tell me that he's not retarded.
I felt retarded because I was treated like I was retarded. It wasn't just the boys who called me retard, but the teachers like Mrs. Weaver who scapegoated me whenever something went wrong; it was social workers who would ask me very slowly which one of the pictures was a "tri yayne gull". I'm retarded godammit, not an imbecile! "Can you bounce this ball?" Of course I can bounce the damn ball! I'm a little boy, that's all I want to do with my life.
I feel that way at college, perhaps because I go to shitty colleges. i've made it through 4 years at Columbia without ever really getting any real criticism on my work(and not very much praise, either). Today a teacher flunked me because I didn't really 'get it' and-mixed in with the depression- felt a swell of pride that she failed me because she figured I could get it if I took it again. I was lazy, not hopeless. I showed...ugh...potential (I always have and have always hated it)
People tend to ask how I grew out of it. I didn't. Maybe the hand-eye coordination stuff improved with Nintendo. That IS how I convinced my parents to buy the 8-bits that connected me to every other boy my age in America. The rest of the stuff, I had to make a jump, And that all happened in sixth grade. Around 92, 93 I had only a loose concept of what getting laid was (like what body parts went where...or sometimes there...but how?), but i knew enough to know that I never would in velcro and sweat pants. I want to go shopping! Teach me how to tie my shoes!
That was the one and only time I went to the Gap. I got some Cross Colours t-shirts and some flannel, because I really wasn't sure if I was black...or maybe 'grunge' or something. Jeans were weird and uncomfortable, and I wasn't able to get used to them as quickly as I had the imitation-Nike sneaks, but the next day both Katherine Rekkas (another depressed, soon-to-be extremely well developed young nerd I would 'date' in 8th grade) and Alfredo (whose older brother was, like, totally getting him into the Latin Kings and had, like, totally seen all this porno) told me i looked good, and I knew I was on the right track.
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