Falling Off My High Horse

I'm sure that some people would kill to hear "You're so smart," or "You're so funny," just once in their lives. As a brilliant and hilarious person, I don't have that problem. Rather, I hate hearing it because you can only hear it so many times in one day and still believe it.

Since I was young, I've had this "problem" where everyone and their mom has to comment on what a great kid I am and how advanced I am in my general scholastic achievement (I just used big words there to be ironic). They say it's lonely at the top, and sometimes I feel like the most apt example of that to walk the streets of Framingham.

When I was 7 years old, my parents finally settled on a house. We had been moving from town to town, apartment to apartment. At one point, my grandmother's house was our home. Luckily, she had six kids, all but 2 who had fled the coop. So there were three floors of space and a pool for us to spend our days in. It was almost like being at a hotel, only without the army of Hispanic people cleaning up after us.

Anyway, a new house meant a new elementary school for me to attend. Having moved twice already, I was finding it hard to keep friends. Making them was a whole other story. When the boys won't stop calling you "a girl" and the girls hate you 'cause you always played with their favorite doll at recess and wouldn't share it, there really aren't many shoulders for you to cry on.

The same problems followed me into 2nd grade. A couple months into the school year, we were well into our journal projects, where we'd write about whatever we wanted for about 20 minutes every day. I happened to mention my address and the fact that I had just gone to Disney On Ice in one entry. My teacher, the nicest woman you'll ever meet, took it upon herself to force me into friendship with one of the other boys in the class.

"Corey," she cooed one day, "why don't you talk to Tom at recess? He just went to Disney On Ice too and he lives a couple streets over from you!"

Insecure, shy, and not knowing what lied ahead of me, I mustered up the courage to talk to him. Miraculously, we became fast friends and arranged to have playdates every Monday. Life was grand. ...Except for Wednesdays at recess.

"Tom, why weren't you at recess?" I asked one day, wanting to get to the bottom of my having been ditched.

"I was in SAGE."

"What's that?"

My 7 year old biffle went on to explain that SAGE was a program for "gifted" and "talented" kids. Not wanting to be left out, and believing myself to be the steamingest pile of hot shit, I wanted in. But I didn't know how to go about executing my master plan.

That said, fate has a funny way of working. One day, my teacher noticed my mental math and spelling prowess in class. She recommended me to be tested for this program and I was ELATED. I could be with my friend every Wednesday, and maybe even meet kids who were at my intellectual level!

One day during class, I was pulled into the SAGE office by a nice woman with a tragic haircut. She started asking me questions which had nothing to do with how smart I am.

For 20 minutes, I had to come up with an answer to: "What would you do if you had a billion dollars?"

"...I'd buy a big house," I said.

The woman looked disheartened. "Uh-huh. What else?"

"A puppy!"

"Yeah. And?"

"...A Nintendo?"

She was obviously trying to elicit some sort of intricate answer of how I would use the money to research stem cells and use them to bring Elvis back to life. Or some kind of scientific bullshit like that. Eventually, I was dismissed and went home, where I spent days eagerly awaiting my test results.

They came in one day in the mail. My mother opened them.

"Coah, what's this?" she asked.

"My SAGE test! How did I do?"

"...You didn't get in."

"WHAT?" I grabbed the piece of paper.

It said, "26/100" and went on to explain that I wasn't creative enough for their fancy gifted program. I'm plenty gifted, but apparently, you also have to be a nerd who reads "Scientific Weekly" or you have to be able to write a short story complete with complex metaphors for the state of the modern world in order to gain the opportunity for advanced public schooling.

So, I may not have gotten special treatment. But I developed social skills. And really, isn't that what matters?