In the early 1980s, everyone my mom knew was testing to see if their child was gifted. Gifted children were mainly classified by IQ, and were categorized by grade level, first through twelfth. One of my mom’s friends was a tester for the schools and at the bequest of those on her circle she would administer IQ tests to her friend’s kids.
Most of the kids were considered average (below 115) or bright (a technical term for those with a 115-129 score, about 1 in six people).
When I was four, it was my turn. I remember sitting at my kitchen table with my mom’s friend and she was asking me a lot of questions and was very interested in my answers. I loved the attention and was happy I didn’t have to talk about myself, just what I thought about something specific.
I didn’t know it was a test, or that I was being timed, or that it would have any effect on my life at all. I just knew someone wanted to hear what I had to say.
My mom was told to stay out of the kitchen, but she listened by the door as close as she could without getting caught. For hours, she listened and tried to stifle her laughs at my answers. She said I would be asked to explain something and the story I would come up with was a strange abstract way of explaining the concept.
She often tells this story to explain it:
I remember one day when I picked him up from pre-school and he sat in the back of my Datsun 240 Z. I watched him in my rear view mirror as he looked through the sunroof at the night sky. Kelly was in the front seat.
“Mommy, ” he asked me “what is the universe?”
“The universe is the sun and the stars,” I said, trying to make the concept simple to understand. It was a grand question.
“and the planets?” he asked.
“yes, and the planets” I said.
“and Mars?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied “all the planets and the moon too!” I said with great excitement.
I thought for sure he has grasped the concept of the universe. Quite a tall order for such a little boy. But I pressed further to see if he got it.
“So Brandon,” I asked him.
“You tell mommy, what is the universe?”
And Brandon, brimming with confidence said, “Mom, that’s easy. The universe is when you bring your own lunch.”
She laughs every time she tells that story, which is often.
After a few hours, we were done and I was a little tired. My mom asked her friend how I did and her friend said I was highly gifted (145-160 score, about one in one thousand people) and I was at a twelfth grade level.
When my mom told me about being gifted, she said there are plenty of homeless people living under bridges with high IQs. It didn’t matter how smart you are, only what you do with it.
She said that thing about smart homeless people a lot, almost as much as she said the world is not my toilet. I can hear it in my head right now. If she was mad enough, her Long Island accent would come out and my sister and I would laugh. It never helped.
She knew she had to keep my mind busy and the public school system didn’t have much to offer me. I had poor grades and comments like “Doesn’t work up to his potential,” and “Finished first and distracts others.” Not much has changed.
My asynchronous development gave me a big mind in a little body. My emotional growth was considerably slower than my intellectual growth, and I was instantly frustrated with anything that needed to be felt more than figured out.
Raising me was not easy. In addition to having the social and emotional issues of giftedness, I had obsessive-compulsive disorder and night terrors. Nothing was really known about any of those three things at the time and the medically accepted idea was that eventually, I would grow out of it.
To keep my mind busy, my mom gave me dell grid logic puzzles. It’s a setup with a blank matrix, four to five clues, and the solver has to use the clues to deduce the solution, usually who did what, when, for who, and what they had for lunch or their favorite flower or some other inane detail I probably don’t even know about my best friends.
Like many gifted people, I developed an addiction problem and was close to becoming one of the smart homeless people under a bridge.
When I was in rehab once, my mom came out for family week and she brought me a magazine with logic puzzles. And chocolate. I didn’t have a lot of time with her, so I put them in my room and spent a couple hours with her sitting by the lake.
Later that night, I went back to my room and my hands were shaky and I couldn’t really see the puzzle all that well. I had to close one eye to read the clues and the drugs made my mind foggy and slow. I grabbed a pencil and started on the puzzle. I was weak and couldn’t sleep and thought I would never get better. Getting through the night was he hardest part. After I finished the first puzzle, I saw the sun rising out of the window and I remembered why I did those puzzles.
I like to think anything can be figured out if I just think hard enough. I like to think there’s some metaphysical matrix and everything has a logical place and it all fits together and no place is empty or too full.
But it doesn’t work like that. Or maybe it does, I’m just one of the boxes and not the solver.
B
Most of the kids were considered average (below 115) or bright (a technical term for those with a 115-129 score, about 1 in six people).
When I was four, it was my turn. I remember sitting at my kitchen table with my mom’s friend and she was asking me a lot of questions and was very interested in my answers. I loved the attention and was happy I didn’t have to talk about myself, just what I thought about something specific.
I didn’t know it was a test, or that I was being timed, or that it would have any effect on my life at all. I just knew someone wanted to hear what I had to say.
My mom was told to stay out of the kitchen, but she listened by the door as close as she could without getting caught. For hours, she listened and tried to stifle her laughs at my answers. She said I would be asked to explain something and the story I would come up with was a strange abstract way of explaining the concept.
She often tells this story to explain it:
I remember one day when I picked him up from pre-school and he sat in the back of my Datsun 240 Z. I watched him in my rear view mirror as he looked through the sunroof at the night sky. Kelly was in the front seat.
“Mommy, ” he asked me “what is the universe?”
“The universe is the sun and the stars,” I said, trying to make the concept simple to understand. It was a grand question.
“and the planets?” he asked.
“yes, and the planets” I said.
“and Mars?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied “all the planets and the moon too!” I said with great excitement.
I thought for sure he has grasped the concept of the universe. Quite a tall order for such a little boy. But I pressed further to see if he got it.
“So Brandon,” I asked him.
“You tell mommy, what is the universe?”
And Brandon, brimming with confidence said, “Mom, that’s easy. The universe is when you bring your own lunch.”
She laughs every time she tells that story, which is often.
After a few hours, we were done and I was a little tired. My mom asked her friend how I did and her friend said I was highly gifted (145-160 score, about one in one thousand people) and I was at a twelfth grade level.
When my mom told me about being gifted, she said there are plenty of homeless people living under bridges with high IQs. It didn’t matter how smart you are, only what you do with it.
She said that thing about smart homeless people a lot, almost as much as she said the world is not my toilet. I can hear it in my head right now. If she was mad enough, her Long Island accent would come out and my sister and I would laugh. It never helped.
She knew she had to keep my mind busy and the public school system didn’t have much to offer me. I had poor grades and comments like “Doesn’t work up to his potential,” and “Finished first and distracts others.” Not much has changed.
My asynchronous development gave me a big mind in a little body. My emotional growth was considerably slower than my intellectual growth, and I was instantly frustrated with anything that needed to be felt more than figured out.
Raising me was not easy. In addition to having the social and emotional issues of giftedness, I had obsessive-compulsive disorder and night terrors. Nothing was really known about any of those three things at the time and the medically accepted idea was that eventually, I would grow out of it.
To keep my mind busy, my mom gave me dell grid logic puzzles. It’s a setup with a blank matrix, four to five clues, and the solver has to use the clues to deduce the solution, usually who did what, when, for who, and what they had for lunch or their favorite flower or some other inane detail I probably don’t even know about my best friends.
Like many gifted people, I developed an addiction problem and was close to becoming one of the smart homeless people under a bridge.
When I was in rehab once, my mom came out for family week and she brought me a magazine with logic puzzles. And chocolate. I didn’t have a lot of time with her, so I put them in my room and spent a couple hours with her sitting by the lake.
Later that night, I went back to my room and my hands were shaky and I couldn’t really see the puzzle all that well. I had to close one eye to read the clues and the drugs made my mind foggy and slow. I grabbed a pencil and started on the puzzle. I was weak and couldn’t sleep and thought I would never get better. Getting through the night was he hardest part. After I finished the first puzzle, I saw the sun rising out of the window and I remembered why I did those puzzles.
I like to think anything can be figured out if I just think hard enough. I like to think there’s some metaphysical matrix and everything has a logical place and it all fits together and no place is empty or too full.
But it doesn’t work like that. Or maybe it does, I’m just one of the boxes and not the solver.
B
May 13, 2008 at 11:46 am
You were right. The universe is when you bring your own lunch.
And spork is god.
That is deeper than I meant it to be.