(no subject)
Mar. 12th, 2006 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickIn other news, my cousin Rob sold the cartoon for his big Mardi-Gras painting thing to Seinfeld. The one on TV, you know. That Seinfeld. This probably makes him a real artist. Huzzah! Also, cousin Beth is contemplating the single life as in maybe not looking to get married again. Interesting. I'd have thought otherwise for her -- she isn't quite as bad about running with scissors as I am. Oh, and Beth's daughter Gloria is beyond the rest of the kids in the class. Beth talked to mom to get a feel for if she should advance or accellerate or whatever Gloria. Mom talked to her friend (still teaching) who does gifted and talented education and has for lo these many years. The friend's quick-and-dirty metric of when it is time to move the child out of regular school is this: If the rest of the students constantly make fun of the child for his or her vocabulary, it is time to move that child elsewhere." By this metric, I would have lasted approximately two weeks in kindergarten.
When I was in seventh grade, one of Amy S's gifted projects was to demonstrate that group brainstorming generated a flourishing of ideas in depth, breadth, and complexity that could not be matched by a single person. Because, you know, brainstorming in groups is better. It's more effective. It's SYNERGISTIC. (I cannot use the word synergy or any of its derivatives without thinking of Jem and the Holograms.) Now, I did not like Amy S. She was pretty and blonde and got to dance with boys and had breasts. I was not pretty or blonde and I didn't get to dance with boys and I didn't have breasts so's you'd notice. Not in seventh grade, I didn't. They're still not striking monuments to my femininity, more like foothills, but enough about my breasts. (Breasts were a lot more important in junior high than they are now.) Amy S had, as popular girls in seventh grade do, a clique of her friends. They were also blonde and pretty with breasts and boys and designer jeans and legwarmers (it was the early eighties) and so forth.
As it happened, Amy got to design her project experiment thing without any apparent teacher input. (If there was teacher-input, it was either criminally neglectful on the subject of not unduly humiliating other students OR targeted vengefully at my sorry ass and I am choosing to believe that neither of those circumstances held sway.) For the group, Amy chose her clique of friends, led by her. (Don't talk to me about the objectivity of the researcher and the inadvisability of being a subject in one's own experiment.) For the individual, she chose me. (The reason I wound up participating in Amy's experiment was that the teacher-supervisor asked me if I would participate in it. She didn't mention that I'd be set off by myself as some kind of freakazoid. I found out that part afterward, when backing out would have meant I'd noticed and been shamed and fuck, I couldn't do that -- might as well disembowel myself honorably right there as try to back out after discovering that I was to be the freak.) As a social statement, the experimental design was cutting beyond belief. *sigh* Amy didn't need to demonstrate that I was not in her little group. I already knew that. Everybody already knew that. Trumpeting what everybody already knows is boring... but she did it anyway. So she and her four little blonde friends sat there in a little circle of includedness and I sat off by myself with my distressingly unfashionable straight brown hair cut boy-short and my unstylish blue jeans and my boyish sneakers and my complete lack of breasts. By myself. I do not think I have ever felt more unlovely, unworthy, or outcaste-unclean than I did in that fucking experiment.
Amy's experimental design was an eloquent statement of who was in what group and who was not. It was clearly intended to make a statement about belonging and it did, rather effectively. What it also said, however, was just as interesting. It also said that Amy was not as smart as I was... and that I could win on a level that Amy, at least, would understand as a victory. :)
In seventh grade, I knew what she was trying to prove with her experiment, why she had picked the group and the individual, and why her experiment was going to fail... and I made it happen. The task we were given for brainstorming was to come up with ways that the school could prevent students from writing on the desks. (That's the kind of earth-shaking challenge I was used to seeing from the G&T education at school, so no surprise there.) We got the usual brief about any idea, no matter how silly and just encouraging the flow of ideas without actually editing them -- the normal brainstorming instructions for people who don't know how to do it. Ho-hum.
Can I have another sheet of paper? This one's full.
What Amy failed to grasp was that even though her clique was made of her friends, they were all people so worried about looking uncool in front of each other that they would not say a single damn thing that could possibly be taken as stupid. The thing about junior high girls is that while it's hell being outside of the pack, being inside a pack is almost as bad. In the packs, they turn on any who fall, any who show weakness, and they tear them to pieces. So, y'know, she wasn't going to get whole-hearted cooperation in her group. I, on the other hand, didn't have a single fucking thing to lose.
I broke her experiment, on purpose, vindictively, and because I could. They had maybe forty suggestions. I had two hundred and twenty. The very best part is that I left slowly and got to hear Amy ask the teacher how she was supposed to write up those results because they didn't fit at all.
When I was in seventh grade, one of Amy S's gifted projects was to demonstrate that group brainstorming generated a flourishing of ideas in depth, breadth, and complexity that could not be matched by a single person. Because, you know, brainstorming in groups is better. It's more effective. It's SYNERGISTIC. (I cannot use the word synergy or any of its derivatives without thinking of Jem and the Holograms.) Now, I did not like Amy S. She was pretty and blonde and got to dance with boys and had breasts. I was not pretty or blonde and I didn't get to dance with boys and I didn't have breasts so's you'd notice. Not in seventh grade, I didn't. They're still not striking monuments to my femininity, more like foothills, but enough about my breasts. (Breasts were a lot more important in junior high than they are now.) Amy S had, as popular girls in seventh grade do, a clique of her friends. They were also blonde and pretty with breasts and boys and designer jeans and legwarmers (it was the early eighties) and so forth.
As it happened, Amy got to design her project experiment thing without any apparent teacher input. (If there was teacher-input, it was either criminally neglectful on the subject of not unduly humiliating other students OR targeted vengefully at my sorry ass and I am choosing to believe that neither of those circumstances held sway.) For the group, Amy chose her clique of friends, led by her. (Don't talk to me about the objectivity of the researcher and the inadvisability of being a subject in one's own experiment.) For the individual, she chose me. (The reason I wound up participating in Amy's experiment was that the teacher-supervisor asked me if I would participate in it. She didn't mention that I'd be set off by myself as some kind of freakazoid. I found out that part afterward, when backing out would have meant I'd noticed and been shamed and fuck, I couldn't do that -- might as well disembowel myself honorably right there as try to back out after discovering that I was to be the freak.) As a social statement, the experimental design was cutting beyond belief. *sigh* Amy didn't need to demonstrate that I was not in her little group. I already knew that. Everybody already knew that. Trumpeting what everybody already knows is boring... but she did it anyway. So she and her four little blonde friends sat there in a little circle of includedness and I sat off by myself with my distressingly unfashionable straight brown hair cut boy-short and my unstylish blue jeans and my boyish sneakers and my complete lack of breasts. By myself. I do not think I have ever felt more unlovely, unworthy, or outcaste-unclean than I did in that fucking experiment.
Amy's experimental design was an eloquent statement of who was in what group and who was not. It was clearly intended to make a statement about belonging and it did, rather effectively. What it also said, however, was just as interesting. It also said that Amy was not as smart as I was... and that I could win on a level that Amy, at least, would understand as a victory. :)
In seventh grade, I knew what she was trying to prove with her experiment, why she had picked the group and the individual, and why her experiment was going to fail... and I made it happen. The task we were given for brainstorming was to come up with ways that the school could prevent students from writing on the desks. (That's the kind of earth-shaking challenge I was used to seeing from the G&T education at school, so no surprise there.) We got the usual brief about any idea, no matter how silly and just encouraging the flow of ideas without actually editing them -- the normal brainstorming instructions for people who don't know how to do it. Ho-hum.
Can I have another sheet of paper? This one's full.
What Amy failed to grasp was that even though her clique was made of her friends, they were all people so worried about looking uncool in front of each other that they would not say a single damn thing that could possibly be taken as stupid. The thing about junior high girls is that while it's hell being outside of the pack, being inside a pack is almost as bad. In the packs, they turn on any who fall, any who show weakness, and they tear them to pieces. So, y'know, she wasn't going to get whole-hearted cooperation in her group. I, on the other hand, didn't have a single fucking thing to lose.
I broke her experiment, on purpose, vindictively, and because I could. They had maybe forty suggestions. I had two hundred and twenty. The very best part is that I left slowly and got to hear Amy ask the teacher how she was supposed to write up those results because they didn't fit at all.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-12 04:19 pm (UTC)so much more devious than the boys. they'd wait until recess and beat their victim bloody.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-12 09:22 pm (UTC)If the group had been the cabal ...
As for all the teen angst... ah, yes. I remember it well. For I was boobless and unpopular and too smart at that age as well.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-12 10:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-12 11:39 pm (UTC)I remember in elementary school feeling bad that I wasn't smart enough to skip grades. I never realized it was a thing that parents did and schools just didn't advance you automatically.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-13 03:39 am (UTC)But my spouse not only understands my polysyllabic bent, he speaks my lingo.
Hooray!
no subject
Date: 2006-03-13 09:55 am (UTC)Which meant you were allowed to say "angst" and "sidhe" and "quark" but not "mercy" or "friendly" or "hungry"? :)
no subject
Date: 2006-03-14 05:15 pm (UTC)Beer was an acceptable word. Belch and burp (which they also taught me how to do...).
no subject
Date: 2006-03-14 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-13 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-14 05:16 pm (UTC)I know altogether too many incredibly intelligent and well read people. And yet there are not enough of us, are there?
Ones with empathy and imagination as well as brains.