Special

“Well how bad is he?” Mr. Wiseman bent down to poke me in the head as though checking for a wall stud. I shrieked in surprised pain. Pam, the teacher’s assistant shrugged indifferently. I blinked and rubbed my forehead as the adults continued their conversation.

“I don’t know. I guess he had some kind of panic attack when they tried to give him the placement test. Told me to send him to you.” Pam looked up a nearby flight of stairs, eager to leave. The politely named “Chapter One” class was in the school basement. At best it could be described as “monochromatic” at worst “Soviet.”

“All right then, come on in son. Best get to know one another. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.” Mr. Wiseman placed a hand on my shoulder and with a not too gentle extension of his arm, shoved me into the Chapter One classroom. Chapter One: a place for students who would have to start at the beginning… for the rest of their natural lives.

Even in the first grade, I was well aware I did not belong in most places. More than likely that’s the very reason I clammed up during the placement test and refused to answer any questions. However, upon entering the grey-tone Chapter One classroom, I experienced separation on a scale I had previously believed to be impossible. I knew suddenly, what it would be like to live on an alien world without the company of my own species.

Mr. Wiseman left me to stand in the middle of the room, without any sort of introduction, sat down behind his desk, pulled out a newspaper, and took a scoop of something from a short cylindrical can and put it in his lower lip. For the first time, I opened my mouth to speak. “Mr. Wiseman, what’s that?”

Annoyed, Mr. Wiseman lowered the top of his newspaper, regarded me with a cold eye, and said “Our little secret.” Mr. Wiseman then looked over at a girl whose only legitimate claim at retardation was a speech impediment and an unfortunate combination of features that made her look like a partially transformed werewolf. “Lois! Watch the door.” The girl got up from playing with blocks, and in a depressingly well practiced fashion, stood next to the door, to keep a look out for any encroaching adults.

As I stood in the middle of the drab room, I felt even more out of place than I had at the placement test. I knew instinctively that this was a social order to which I could not hope to assimilate. I took my back pack in one hand, and dragged a desk to one lonely corner, and promptly began the never-ending task of watching. I had the feeling that besides an occasional “don’t touch that!” there wasn’t going to be much instruction.

There were, if memory serves, approximately ten other children in the classroom with me. Two, like me, were completely aware of their surroundings and had only been placed there through bureaucratic oversight. Lois, who was watching the door was mentally well furbished other than for the aforementioned speech impediment and lycanthropy. Also, a boy named Sam Willis, was considered especially remedial on account of his diabetes and love of eating paste. The rest of the children, however were completely lost.

A troll-like girl named April wandered around the room randomly sniffing various objects, and growling whenever someone came too near. With what few words she possessed she would loudly proclaim that Bill Clinton was her uncle. Everyone stayed clear of a Down’s Syndrome boy named Micah, due to the fact that he was unpredictable, and at thirteen, much stronger than any of us. Another boy, Jessie, sat very close to Mr. Wiseman’s desk manically rubbing his hands across the top of his skull, feeling the soft spots where it had never grown completely closed. I made mental dossiers of each child in turn, making notes that would help me survive in the days to come.

I might have sat, unperturbed my vigil, for the entire day had not Lois’ brother Stanley decided to take an interest in me. Like Micah, Stanley was thirteen years old, and suffered from some debilitating mental infirmity that put a dimmer switch on all but the most basic reasoning skills. For this reason, when Stanley introduced himself to me, he did not extend his hand, or offer his name. Rather he put one hand over the left side of his face, and asked in a loose style of speech, “Wanna play marbles?”

In a socially awkward, but not retarded way, I nodded. As I was about to ask where the marbles were kept, Stanley caught me completely off guard when he threw his glass eye on my desktop. It rattled and spun like a dradle on the pressed plastic. Before I had time to be shocked, Stanley eagerly put up his hands and waited for me to flick his eye back to him. After a few minutes, during which we mimed various actions at each other, I finally accepted what he wanted me to do, and I flicked Stanley’s glass eye back to him like a paper football. He caught it with a squeal of innocent glee and immediately threw it back to me. I caught it, found myself to be strangely delighted to be holding the glass eye of another boy, and flicked it back. In no time the two of us were in hysterics.

April, the long lost niece of Bill Clinton, hearing our delight immediately tried to work her way into the middle of our game. Jumping upon my desktop like some kind of trained seal she positioned her body completely between Stanley and myself. Her unwashed gut pressed up against my face. She smelled of pizza and old piss. “Let me play too, Stanley!”

Stanley put his glass eye in my hand, with a firm “hold this” and proceeded to open his empty socket wide. He then placed his face inches in front of April’s and shouted “Cyclops!” at the top of his lungs. While I found this to be mildly distasteful, the action induced April to cry at the top of her lungs, sprint out of the room, and seek refuge in a stall of the nearest boy’s bathroom.

Mr. Wiseman got out of his desk, swatted Stanley’s hands with a coiled up newspaper, and left the room shouting April’s name at the top of his lungs. Moments later, we heard “God damn it! Get out of the bathroom!” before Mr. Wiseman appeared, dragging April by the back of her shirt. He then swatted her several times all over her body with his newspaper before taking his seat and taking a fresh dip of tobacco. April huddled in a corner and cried, while Stanley, very quietly tried to resume our game of “Marbles.” Seeing as I was too shocked by seeing an adult commit violence against a child to be much of a marbles partner, Stanley turned his glass eye on its side and began to fill a dent in the back with little bits of paper ripped from the corner of a nearby coloring book, with the focus of a pioneer starting a fire without matches.

I gloomily wondered at the fate which had befallen me, when the teacher’s assistant showed up again. We had plenty of warning of her arrival, as Lois suddenly sprinted from her vigil at the door, and ran to Mr. Wiseman’s desk to warn him. The old man quickly spit his chew into a cup, put the cup in his desk, wiped his lower lip out with a napkin, and hollered “Lunch time! Line up!” Although I was on my way to the line, Mr. Wiseman, unused to people who could move with reasoned intent, instead grabbed me by the collar of my jacket and thrust me into line with an angry “Stay put!” before moving on to do the same with the other children.

Lois, Stanely, and their brother Alan took up the rear of the line, while I stood at the front with Micah, April, Jessie, and Sam just behind me. As Mr. Wiseman exchanged a few gruff pleasantries with the teacher’s assistant, Stanley switched places with his brothers and sisters, so that he could stand behind me. “Watch me when we get into the cafeteria,” he murmured in his half coherent voice. He seemed to be dimly amused by something.

On the way to the cafeteria, I was made to understand that while interaction with the “normal” students wasn’t prohibited, it was strictly frowned upon. When we arrived, the Teacher’s Assistant sat me and my comrades down at a lunch table far to the back of the room, before promptly leaving to get a lunch tray for Jessie as he could not be compelled to take his hands off of his skull long enough to do so himself. As soon as the TA’s back was turned, Stanley turned to me, and whispered, “Now watch.” And with that… he was off with a flash.

At the head of the cafeteria was the table of several girls whom I, and a few others, would later name “The McDermoth McBitches.” Their vapid conversations, hollow laughter, and undeserved social status served as a barrier between themselves and my comrades to the rear. Stanley, running ahead at top speed, seemed not to notice the growing wave of unease that passed through the room with his every step. Suddenly, with the grace of a dancer, Stan spun on his heel, put a hand to his face, removed his eye, and when the revolution was finished Stanley sent his glass eye skittering down the girl’s table like skipping a rock across a lake. There was a moment of stunned silence during which Stan had the presence of mind to victoriously shout “Cyclops!” before the screaming and crying began.

Susie, Ann, Ashton, and Kelly ran from the table like World War I soldiers climbing out of a trench filled with poisonous gas. The TA seeing Stanley in all of his cyclopeian glory, ran at him like a member of the secret service at a would-be assassin. “Stanley! What did we tell you about taking your eye out! You’ll be suspended for this!” Stan fell to his knees in religious satisfaction, and had to be dragged to the principal’s office. His eye lay on the cafeteria table for nearly ten minutes before someone remembered to come in and pick it up.

Without Stanley the rest of the day progressed at a crawl. I merely sat in my corner desk, a vision of gloom and doom, watching April fight with whomever she could, as Mr. Wiseman occasionally spit in a cup and turned the page of the newspaper. April tried several times to provoke me but I refused to return her hails, and soon enough she left me alone too. The day ended, I left for the place my mother told me she was going to pick me up, and fifteen minutes after everyone else had been picked up, my mom came and picked up my sister and I. Two days later my mother finally got the notice that I had been deemed “remedial” and put in the Chapter One classroom. What followed was confusing on several levels.

My mother, while acknowledging that I was nowhere near as gifted as my sister Rachel, was nonetheless incensed that “her son” was “retarded.” To that end, she began angrily searching the phone book so she could ask everyone from the teacher I should have had, to the principal of the school “just what the hell” was going on? When they explained that I had refused to take any of the aptitude tests, my mother put the phone to her shoulder, and angrily demanded of me to tell her whether or not I was “really retarded” to which I shrugged and continued to build spaceships out of legos

My father on the other hand, accepted my retardation whole-heartedly. “Darcy, calm down. Our son is retarded. I was retarded too. Mr. Wiseman was my teacher in grade school. Why should BC be any different?” I was neither surprised nor unsurprised to find out that my father was a product of Chapter One. Rather it struck me as something that fit perfectly into the place, like an answer to a riddle. In the end, my mother’s angry insistence that there was “no way” a “son of mine” could be “a flippin’ retard” proved to be strong enough that the tests were rescheduled.

The following morning it was discovered that I actually possessed a genius level IQ. I was put in the “normal” classroom immediately thereafter. No one ever tried to make accommodations for me ever again.