The Fly on the Wall Down the Hall Is Driving Me Crazy - page2

My early school years were traumatic. The psychological abuse from teachers skewed my perception of my ability to learn as well as of the learning process itself. All the degrees in the world are not worth a second of the hell I endured during those days in Mrs. Retchit's classroom. Did her radar lock on to my acute sensitivity? Did I broadcast telltale signs of my deficiency before I even opened my mouth? I must have worn a big sign on my back visible only to Retchit: Please abuse me! Ask only me to go to the blackboard to do math because I want to be humiliated before Mrs. Retchit, God and the world. It must have been there, and she must have read it every day because she always obliged. If you could have listened in on my thoughts as I trudged to the schoolhouse chamber of horrors on a typical day, you would have heard something like this:

Gotta hurry, gotta get there, come on, Dan get your butt in gear. Stomach hurts, feels empty, can't barf, not sick enough to stay home today. Homework as usual didn't do it. Got to find a way to make this work. Did I forget my book? What can I say that will sound good? Gotta make it up, gotta make it do. Pants feel like hell, can't stand it too baggy, not a part of me. What are those kids laughing at outside the school? Don't they know where they are? How can they have fun at a place like this? Inside at last. Here goes.

As I breathe in the school odors - pencils, erasers, marble floors layered with wax and disinfectant, that funny red sawdust stuff, teacher's perfume, body odors, and the manure smell on the pants of the farm kids--I shudder, anticipating the worst.

Stomach bouncing, getting nearer to Retchit's domain, I find my carved-up huge desk looking exactly like all the other carved-up huge desks arranged neatly and expectantly, awaiting my terror, standing perfectly inline as symbols of the order of this industrial age. God, I would think, wherever you are, please see me through another day. Grant me the blessing of invisibility. He never did.

Retchit had X-ray vision. She could see my terror-stricken face through the chest of the classmate in front of me. The devil himself could not have inspired more dread than the words, "David, would you come up to the board today and demonstrate for the class how you solved the problem on page thirty-two of your workbook?" From that point on I was frozen in autopilot mode as if out of my body in a dream. Long before I could turn to page thirty-two to see what the problem was, my brain had shut down. The problem could have been "1+1," and I still would have blocked the answer. As I stared at the unsolved problem in my workbook, it looked huge, scattered all over the page.

When I took my detached, rubbery hand and scrawled the problem on the board, what I saw was complete gobbledegook. I could do nothing but squirm, twitch, sweat, and say stupid things as Retchit interrogated me. Mercifully, after what seemed to be several hours of standing like Gumby at the blackboard, after all the guffaws and twitters had died down, and I was finally back at my desk, Mrs. Retchit would say sweetly, "Surely someone can solve this simple problem? What about it, Jackie? You can do this in a flash, am I right?" She was always right.

I had trouble throughout my school years with misguided teachers, but my time with Mrs. Retchit was the worst. She instilled in me a total fear of learning. She taught me that learning was not safe. I now had two problems: fear of learning and overload. I don't know which one influenced my school experience more.

It was not a question of intelligence. My IQ was above average, and in circumstances where fear and distractions did not overcome me, I enjoyed learning. I looked for opportunities to be alone in a quiet place with a book on any subject from space exploration to wildlife. But I found it increasingly difficult to pay attention to what was going on in the classroom. My mind was always in overdrive. My fantasies revolved around any and every outside character and prop from a stray dog ambling across the playground to the sound of milkman Hansen's truck, from Mrs. Ackley out for a walk to the empty ball field waiting to be played on.

I never had an answer to what was wrong with me because I just did not know. Like everyone else, I had somehow believed that if I just tried harder I could make myself better. But if you are trying to pound in a nail with a marshmallow, it doesn't help to hit harder. Now I felt that perhaps I could apply the energy I had expended in attempting to fix myself to what I could do something about. The defenses I had used to protect myself from the whys now seemed to fall on the floor around me like a discarded skin no longer of use. Years of grief seemed to flow out in that instant like a dam of realization had burst as I relived the years of pain when nothing made sense and I had no answers and no explanations.

Math was the worst. I didn't see numbers the same way everyone else did. Give me words any day. I never got the hang of putting those blobby little numbers together to come up with something that made sense. It was like trying to arrange stars in some kind of neat, tidy paint-by-number package. I couldn't concentrate long enough to follow a problem through all the steps to its conclusion. I especially hated those stupid story problems. By the time I had read three sentences chock-full of apples and oranges, I had forgotten the first sentence.

I don't blame most of the teachers or my parents or schoolmates for my problems in school. After all, they couldn't experience my situation, so how could they know how it felt? I longed to do what was expected of me, to be able to work along with the class on projects and assignments, to pay attention, to learn. More than anything else I wanted to succeed and belong. And God knows I wanted to break my pattern of rushing through the present routine. I just didn't know how.

By the time I entered high school I was convinced there was something seriously wrong with me, although deep down I knew I was not stupid. I felt deadened by the "I can't do it" that permeated my head and my gut. Echoes of doubt reverberated with each word I spoke each time I thought maybe I had something to say, but at the same time I was getting more and more adept at hiding my shame.

As I reached adolescence the homework battles were getting worse. My mental defenses snapped to red alert status even at the thought of my dad helping me. His participation as substitute teacher was always short-lived. If I failed to grasp an "easy" equation he was so plainly pointing out, he lost his patience; what little he had; and stomped out of the room, leaving a trail of expletives in his wake. Gentle, patient Mom would then come to my rescue until I either grasped it or faked it. "Fake it until you make it" became my tried an trusted motto.

As I reached adolescence I became fussier about my clothes, I experienced more mood swings, and my problems with attention, concentration, frustration tolerance, and memory got worse. I would have a fit if my pants were too tight or too loose. I know all kids go through a thing about clothes, but my reasons were different. Sure, I wanted to look good because it would help me feel better, but there was more to it than that. My reaction to ill-fitting jeans was like my reaction to crowds of people or to being hugged or touched. I felt invaded and violated when I was in too close quarters with anything. I needed my space.

I had learned years before that I could find places of retreat that would afford me some relief from overstimulation and confusion. The first place I found was the hidey-hole under the steps to the basement. It was a great fort and a perfect refuge. The coal bin was a favorite place , too, because it smelled good.

I needed order. I needed to make sense of the world. When I couldn't trust my own thinking or when my surroundings became too chaotic, I sought stability through my touchstone people; my mother and my brother--or in retreat places or through fantasies of an upcoming holiday, weekend, or dinner. Probably because the present was always fleeting and indecipherable, I learned to live for times in the future that offered recreation, retreat, and release: weekends, holidays, summers, any time I could be free of the restraints of school or work. Conjuring up positive feelings about the future helped me cope with the present.

Aside from these coping strategies, I developed three other sources of comfort: music, tobacco, and alcohol. Singing along with Elvis, Little Richard, and the Everly Brothers allowed me to enjoy the fantasy of being someone else for a while. Music flooded me with comfort and made soothing connections among the neurons in my brain.

I discovered tobacco in early adolescence. Those were the days when everyone smoked as if it was the right thing to do. I learned to swing a golf club at age two, and by age ten I was regularly trooping around the nine-hole course with other kids. I soon knew all the prime places on the course to smoke where we would not be discovered. We stashed our smokes along the route of the three or so holes that were the most isolated on the course. I could never get enough of those cigarettes. When I learned to inhale I learned to relax. Smokes and I were going to be buddies for many years.

But I didn't really learn the meaning of the word relax until I met the Big A: alcohol. I already had helped Dad finish off a beer now and then and secretly drained quite a few Hamm's or Schlitz cans. The taste was  pleasant, but the real message of this elixir didn't reach me until I was around twelve or thirteen. And what better place than the good old golf course to experience that magic moment?

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