It's Kind of a Funny Story

Aaron, who ended up in eight out of my nine classes, got a 100 on the start-of-school reading quiz. He had read the books in Europe, where he got to go over the summer because his dad’s books were popular there. He came back not just tan and full of knowledge and pictures, but ripe with stories of the European girls he had hooked up with. He said he and Nia had talked and she was totally cool with the other girls; he said he was busy turning her into a freak, someone who would be down for anything. When we hung out now, I didn’t say half as much as I did that first night; I just listened and stayed impressed, tried to control my lower half while Nia was there, pictured her in different freeze-frames for later in the evening.

Executive Pre-Professional High School was hard.

The teachers all told me I was going to have four hours of homework a night, but I didn’t believe it—plus I believed I could handle it. I had gotten into the school; I’d definitely be able to take anything it could dish out, right?

The first semester, in addition to the book list, I had this class called Intro to Wall Street that required me to pick up the New York Times and Wall Street Journal every day. It turned out I was supposed to have been picking them up over the summer as well—some kind of handout that I didn’t get in the mail. I needed to create a portfolio of current events articles and show how they related to stock prices, and to get the back issues. I couldn’t use the Internet; the teacher made me go to the library and use microfiche, which is like trying to read the U.S. Constitution off a postage stamp, and when I got two weeks behind on that, I had two more weeks of newspapers to pick up. The papers were so long; it was unbelievable how much news there was every day. And I was supposed to scan it all? How did anyone do it? The papers piled up in my room, and every day when I came home I looked at them and knew that I could handle them, that if I just opened that first one I’d be able to get through them all and get the assignment done.

Instead I lay in bed and waited for Aaron to call.

It was about this time that I started labeling things Tentacles. I had a lot of Tentacles. I needed to cut some of them. But I couldn’t; they were all too strong and they had me wrapped too tight; and to cut them I’d have to do something crazy like admit that I wasn’t equipped for school.

The other kids were geniuses. I thought I was a big deal for getting an 800 on the exam—like the entire entering class had gotten 800. It turned out the test had been “broken” in my year; they were tweaking it to make it less formulaic—i.e., less likely to let in people like me. There were kids from Uruguay and Korea who had just learned English but were doing extra credit for the current events stuff in Intro to Wall Street, reading Barron’s and Crain’s Business Daily. There were freshmen taking calculus, while I was stuck in the math that came after algebra, which the teacher announced on the first day was “ding-dong” math and there was no reason for us not to get a 100 in everything. I got an 85 on my first test and a small frowny face.

Plus there were extracurriculars. Other kids did everything: they were on student government; they played sports; they volunteered; they worked for the school newspaper; they had a film club; they had a literature club; they had a chess club; they entered nationwide competitions for building robots out of tongue depressors; they helped teachers out after school; they took classes at local colleges; they assisted on “orientation days.” I didn’t do anything but school and Tae Bo, where I hit a plateau. They humored me in class, letting me fake-fight and do my not-that-form-fitting pushups, but the teacher knew it was something that I didn’t really enjoy. I quit. That was the only Tentacle I ever cut.

Why were the other kids doing better than me? Because they were better, that’s why. That’s what I knew every time I sat down online or got on the subway to Aaron’s house. Other people weren’t smoking and jerking off, and those that were were gifted—able to live and compete at the same time. I wasn’t gifted. Mom was wrong. I was just smart and I worked hard. I had fooled myself into thinking that was something important to the rest of the world. Other people were complicit in this ruse. Nobody had told me I was common.

That’s not to say I did terrible in high school—I got 93’s. That looked good to my parents. Problem is, in the real world, 93 is the crap grade; colleges know what it means—you do just well enough to stay in the 90’s. You’re average. There are a lot of you. You aren’t going over the top; if you’re not doing any extracurriculars you’re done. You can change things in later years, but with 93’s your freshman year, you’re going to have a lot of dead weight.