Essays, Etc.

Gifted, Etc.

When I was in kindergarten, my mother was called in for a parent-teacher meeting. It was the first one she ever had.

She came home crying to my father about how the teacher was thinking of putting me in remedial classes because I didn’t talk to other kids, didn’t share, and I wasn’t very good at art.

Apparently, these are some big red flags in kindergarten, and I threw them up much faster than any of the other children.

So it really came as a surprise when, two weeks later, we received a letter in the mail from the school saying that I was eligible to enter the Gifted program.

When my mother told me this story later, I thought that she was joking. There was no way that all of this could’ve happened; if they wanted to put me in remedial, they would’ve put me in remedial. If they thought I was gifted, they would’ve sent the letter earlier.

But apparently there is just a very fine line in elementary school, and I suppose in general, between being mentally-challenged and needing remedial classes, and being hailed as a genius and taking classes two or three years of what you’re supposed to be taking.

I walk that line with the best of them.

I took the test in second grade. I’m not sure why I didn’t take it immediately; I know that I was eligible and that you could take it as soon as they let you. Maybe my mom was pissed, or maybe she thought it was best to wait. Either way, during the first few weeks of second grade I was taken out of my classroom by a very tall, thin man who wore his glasses too low on his nose.

I remember being seated in a very large room, although it was probably just normal-sized; I was rather small for a second-grader.

He kept asking me what things were. He would point to the blinds, and I would say “blinds.” He would ask what was behind them. I would say “A window.”

He nodded and wrote something down.

I can’t remember anything besides that regarding the test itself, but I do remember that when we got the results back I was off the charts. On the bottom it called me a prodigy or something. I still have it somewhere.

The kids in gifted were stereotypical gifted kids, but not in a bad way. They were just exactly what you would expect if you were to walk into a gifted classroom. It was full of pale, thin, unathletic kids were extremely smart, extremely polite, and very funny. It was almost a second home.

I took the course from second grade to when I graduated middle school. It was with different kids and a different teacher, of course, but I was still in the program. I left in high school because it wasn’t offered, and I wish every day that I could go back.

Ever since I joined my family has treated me differently. They tell other people about it, people I don’t know. I know they’re proud, but I feel as though I owe those people something, like I should yell an equation to them to prove I’m smart.

So I tell that story. I tell it almost every time someone asks me if I’m gifted. I tell them how close I was to being in remedial classes, and how I still don’t talk to people, and how I still don’t share, and how I’m still bad at art.

I went to a family get-together recently and my aunt invited her best friend, who I had never met before. She came over to me, said hello, I said hello back. We shook hands.

“You’re gifted, right?”

I sipped my soda.

“That’s what they tell me.”

She laughed so hard that she started crying.

I kept sipping my punch and told her the story.

“Well, can you do any of that now?”

“What, like, draw and stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“Nah, not really. I can draw a stick figure if you want.”

She laughed again.

“Why did they keep you out of remedial?”

I told her I didn’t know. I had always assumed that it was just because I walked the line between being gifted and being mentally-challenged extremely well, because, according to my elementary school, it’s extremely easy to lose your balance and join the other side.

There’s only one side you want to be on.

I was reminded of this again when I met up with an old school friend of mine recently. He used to be in Gifted class with me, and was an extremely smart. He was always getting good grades, and had the best conduct in the class. Nice guy, too.

Now he’s failing most of his classes, dropped out of accelerated courses, and I think he’s on drugs. That or I’m just so extremely boring to talk to that he zoned out for most of the conversation and his eyes were just red from being tired. I suppose that’s another possibility.

But I was surprised that, of anyone who would drop out, it was him. He was good at art, he shared, and he always talked to other people. He had the best conduct, he never talked back, and he never got bored and just stopped doing work like I did (and still do) on occasion. He was a good kid.

As he stumbled away and met up with his other friends, of whom one had smoke pour out of his mouth when he spoke, I imagined him walking the line and, as he grew older, losing his balance and falling onto the wrong side.

This wasn’t just gifted and mentally challenged anymore. This line was druggie and non-druggie, sharing and taking, writing and reciting all wrapped into one. One side was good, the other was bad.

I imagined myself walking the line, doing cartwheels and skipping along, as all the others fell behind me like dominoes into their respective places in society. They would be labeled, branded, sent off to factories. I skipped along down the middle of the road, dangerously close to the wrong side and just as close to the best thing I could ever become.