Malingerer
Now, I know what you’re thinking: haven proven myself in the realm of computer games, I couldn’t have failed to achieve coolness, right? Reader (may I call you Reader?), I don’t know how it happened, but I did. I failed to achieve. Not just in coolness, but in everything.
My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Chun, whom I adored, noted on my report cards, “Jennifer is not living up to her full potential.” I should have been upset about disappointing a teacher who took me to performances of The King and I and 42nd Street, but see part one of this chapter, re: No Caring. I took the B’s that I could earn without really trying and was just fine with them, thank you.
In sixth grade not caring was easy because my teacher was a very ill alcoholic. No adult noticed this until the school year was almost over, despite thirty kids who must have brought home no homework and reports that their teacher always smelled like Ny-Quil™.
The only thing I can recall learning that year — despite the efforts of Mr. Hogan, the enthusiastic young teacher who was brought in to salvage the sixth grade class that was basically descending into Lord of the Flies territory, except that instead of hunting wild pigs in the jungle we had tetherball — was Venn diagrams. Our alcoholic teacher used my friend Yolanda and me as examples to make one to shame us for talking during reading time. The interlocked circles established that Yolanda and I both had long black hair but differed in height, and then Venn diagrams were stored once more in the warehouse of our teacher’s hidden knowledge, never to be seen again.
The result of this school year of freedom was that I missed about two months of school my first year of junior high. (This was before the advent of middle school, which I think is a terrible idea. I was ten when I started 6th grade. Being faced with sharing a campus with the older eighth graders would have cowed me utterly.)
Here’s the problem: the junior high decided that I was “gifted.” As such, I shared no classes with my Lord of the Flies comrades-in-arms and was instead plopped into “Honors” classes with Professional Overachievers.
The P.O.s knew their shit. They took notes on index cards, did their homework, and got their Pre-Algebra tests returned to them without every answer struck out with red ink. I, however, Didn’t Care.
I didn’t care so much that I wouldn’t get out of bed for school for a week. I developed undiagnosable headaches, threatened to run away if I was made to go to school, and went through periods when I wept constantly.
I don’t know, really, what the adults in my life thought was going on. I got a CT scan. A doctor sternly told me that I had to go to school because there was nothing wrong with me. (He called me “young lady” when he said this.) My Bob Ross-like school counselor tried guided relaxation techniques with me. My mom wrote many letters to the school requesting that I be pulled out of Honors classes, attributing my depression to academic over-exertion.
Depression. It’s so obvious now. Today, a kid like I was at twelve would be taken to a child psychiatrist, diagnosed with a legitimate medical condition, and possibly put on medication. Once my brian chemistry was straightened out, maybe I could have gotten a tutor to learn some study skills. But this was 1989. In 1989 I was just a kid who didn’t want to go to school.
I’m really enjoying these.