I Have A Learning Disability And So Can You - Taboo Tuesday #11

I am the stupid one in my family.

Or, at least, I was.

One of the plentiful benefits of having a dead mom. Ashes don't know SHIT.

And I don't mean that wishy-washy, "oh we're ALL so smart, and I love them the most" bullshit. I mean, honest to God, I was always the paste-eating, outlet touching, count-on-my-fingers stupid one.

Even now, my dad and mom have PhDs, my brother has a Masters, and I have a piece of paper that verifies that I 'do art.'

When I was a kid, my father worried that I might be illiterate because I still predominantly read picture books in middle school.

It's not my fault that that shit is brilliant.

He was proved indirectly correct when, as an adult, I discovered that I had a learning disorder.

After years of being unable to know where I was, know how much money I had, and being consistently, remarkably late -- I finally have an excuse.

It's called: dyscalculia. Or, as I like to refer it -- being stupid.

Let me give you an idea of what that means. Dyscalculia is essentially "math dyslexia." Instead of seeing numbers as jumbled or unreadable, however, it more means that I don't really have a conceptual grasp of numbers that allows me to use them.

For example, I couldn't read analog clocks until I was in sixth grade, around the time I learned to tie my shoes (at this point, Todd would inevitably say "you still can't read clocks or tie your shoes" because he's an asshole and only partially correct). I can't read maps, nor can I navigate to places I'm familiar with without GPS. My whole life, a running joke in my family has been that I never know how much time has passed.

Todd: How long have you been waiting in the car?

Quinn: About two hours.

Todd: It's been fifteen minutes.

I have trouble with my left and rights as an adult, I have no understanding of musical notation despite a decade of piano tutoring, and even now I don't know my times tables.

I can do my 2s, 5s, 6s, 9s, 10s, 11s though, And my 1s!

AKA I can count, bitches.

Over time, this has resulted in me no longer giving a shit. I may not know where the hell I am, what time it is, or if I'm suddenly going to run out of money -- but at least I don't care. 

That wasn't always the case. As a kid I was ashamed of my inabilities. Everyone in my family excelled in math beyond calculus... and I didn't know what 8 x 3 was.

I did learn to count on my fingers real fast though. It's pretty much a super power.

What's worse -- in school I somehow had people tricked. I knew fancy words like "pedantic" and "judgmental," so I was labeled a 'smart kid' from fourth grade on.

I seemed to be precocious, and everyone knew my brother (National Merit Scholar type, real good at tying his shoes), so they assumed I was the same. From fourth grade on, I was put in the "excelled" classes -- honors, GATE, AP -- even in math. Secretly I harbored the shame of feeling inadequate for years. 

In elementary school I skirted teachers' attention by learning to be excellent at FAKING understanding what they were talking about. I learned to parrot lessons and how to take tests well without understanding concepts. 

Works like a charm... with everything but "true" "false."

Middle school was harder. We got grades for subjects -- teachers specialized in shit.

I couldn't fake it effectively anymore, so I started cheating on tests. That worked alright until eighth grade when a catastrophe occurred.

I'll write about that some other time.

By high school, my identity had been so ingrained as a smart kid that if I was proved not to be, I was worried I'd lose everything. There were times, I knew, that other kids, enemy kids...

... would tease me mercilessly if they didn't think I could -- and fucking WOULD -- own them in class.

"I've taken your essay analysis, torn it apart, ate it, pooped it out, and stuck it in a box. Happy birthday, mother fucker."

You see, I went to a weird high school where popularity was, in part, based on how smart you were instead of sports or butt size or whatever. 

Unfortunately, high school is also the time when math starts to get real. I took GATE Geometry with Mrs. Johnson -- a small Korean woman who looked exactly like Edna Mode --

--And who tended to say hilarious things because of her accent. Things like: "You can't go to the bathroom, you're a gay student," "if I put one dollar in a cock machine, and press the button -- how many cocks come out?," and "if I flip a coin what are my chances of getting head? Now what are my chances of getting tail?"

"Syllogism."

I could not fool Mrs. Johnson. By the end of first semester, I barely scraped by with a C- and knew that I would not be able to make it until the end of the year. If I wanted to survive, I had to get out. I convinced the school councilor that I needed to be challenged more, and that I should take math at the community college. She agreed.

For the next three years, I took all my math and math related classes at the local city college. It was easier to manage a passing grade for one semester instead of an entire year, and I was able to retain anonymity when none of the professors paid attention to the students. 

High School teachers might be paid to give a fuck, but college professors sure as hell aren't.

I was consistently getting Cs or Ds, but that was fine. I learned not to care about grades or the "future". Thanks to my mom's death, I also managed to get out of a whole semester of math because of grieving or whatever.

I'm not going to lie. In deciding what college I went to, the math requirement was a huge factor. By no coincidence, my final two choices -- UCLA's theater program and USC's film school -- both required zero math. 

Of course, it wasn't until after I never had to do math again that I learned there was a name for my problem. For years I had been called lazy and unmotivated. 

Jokes on you, suckers! I'm verifiably stupid!

By now, it's not very helpful for me, but at least I know that there's a reason, and I get that warm and fuzzy feeling inside of feeling defective.

Even as an adult it's hard to accept the idea that there might be a problem with my brain. That I'm not as capable as other people. Despite the fact that my issues play very little role in my work, it still troubles me that I might have been better if I wasn't some misfit toy.

But I guess, in a lot of ways, I'm very lucky. I've asked my Todd about such things on numerous occasions, if he thought I'd have been "better off" if my mom wasn't in my life, if I could have done better things if I tried harder... if I could be better if I could read a clock sooner.

His response is something I think about a lot.

"You still can't read a clock."

But I also think about his other response: what the fuck is "better"? I'd be different, yes, but would things be somehow better? Couldn't things just as easily be worse? All of these things, good and bad, have dictated where I ended up... and frankly I'm not unhappy, so why worry?

It gets me thinking... just because there happens to be a name for my "learning disability," the constellation of things I suck at, doesn't mean everyone else doesn't face equal difficulties. They just don't get cool names that sound like spaceships.

Sure, so I can't remember where my house is without Google Maps telling me. That's inconvenient, but I haven't not gotten home... eventually. 

Some people don't understand how to write, they can't adequately express themselves -- that to me feels unimaginable. And I don't just mean illiterate people, there are folks who struggle to get thoughts on a page, to create a story. Something that I do for fun feels impossible for others.

There are people who don't get art -- or worse, get it but can't create it themselves. There are people who don't understand others...

People who struggle handling their own emotions...

People who burn toast.

Is any one of these inabilities worse than the others? Is any one better?

For this reason I criticize the strict intelligences that are valued in school. Students who don't excel in standard curriculum -- math, english, sciences, history -- are stamped as "stupid." To some extent their lives are dictated by those inabilities... and yet people who lack empathy, people with no street smarts, people without a sense of humor... end up in some of the most influential positions in the world.

It sounds hippy-dippy, but there are a lot of different kinds of smarts, and call me crazy --

--but I think that just because not everyone is academic, doesn't mean they aren't valuable. It's a disservice to those we write off as being incapable, and also a disservice to the people we elevate who aren't prepared to identify -- let alone take care of -- their own inabilities. 

How else will Angel learn to dance?

Plus I was lucky. I WAS good at other academic subjects, even if I was miserable at a few. My parents had been able to get higher level education, so they could help me. I had influence over my situation because I was considered "smart", "trustworthy", and "worthwhile". I was supported no matter what. Not everybody has those resources, and I recognize that.

For all sorts of reasons -- wealth, intelligence, race, gender, social standing, environment, outspokenness, dumb luck -- people have influence. For every person who does, there are the ten under him who aren't considered worth enough time to help or recognize.

And you should take my advice on this important, big picture stuff. I'm licensed... I have a degree in art.

Everybody has shortcomings. Not everybody has a diagnosis... and my guess is that most people, like me, don't get help.

Now, I'm not saying that it's anyone's fault. People are dealt the cards they have, and they learn to adapt. 

It's not like any one person is better. We're all stupid. Just different stupid.

So stop telling people they can't read a clock.

Cause I'll get you. I may not know where you are, but Google Maps does.

Love,
Quinn

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