Uniquely Different

My name is Buddy and yes that is my real name although I didn’t actually have a name for the first 18 years of my life.

I am a twin. I have a twin sister and when my mother was pregnant she didn’t know she was having twins. When they did the sonogram they only saw my sister (even then I suppose I was shy) and when they listened to the heartbeats they only heard one because our hearts were beating in time with each other. So my parents picked my sister’s name, clothes, etc. When our birthday came it was quite the surprise, especially since I was the firstborn.

My parents didn’t want to name me on a whim so they left my birth certificate blank and just started calling me “My sister’s little buddy” then “little buddy” then just “Buddy” and 18 years later my mother brought me a blank birth certificate and told me that I had to pick a name because I was about to be an adult! It was a tossup between keeping the name that I had always had or Batman, because “Batman.”

Yes!

How awesome would that have been?

Teacher: “What’s your name?” Me (best Batman voice): “I’m Batman”

Uniquely different

I kept “Buddy” though and a few days before my 18th birthday amended my birth certificate to make it official.

Even at a very young age, I knew I was uniquely different. I was interested in things that others were not and found myself pursuing those interests instead of doing what was expected of me. Extremely curious, especially about things that I was not “Allowed” to do. I figured that if I wasn’t supposed to do it then it must be worth trying.

Then came school

I was suspended from Kindergarten for stuffing one of those huge cardboard tubes from paper rolls with construction paper soaked in rubbing alcohol and throwing a lit match in it. How was I to know that it would be a flame cannon and shoot fiery balls of flaming paper all over the playground? Luckily, I didn’t set anyone on fire.

I’m not really sure where I got the idea to do it, but it was quite glorious. The adults didn’t think so. I spent most of my time in class drawing designs for contraptions or things I thought were “cool”.

And school meant trouble

In 2nd grade, my mother was called into the office because I had drawn a sword with skulls on the hilt and they were concerned that I had a preoccupation with death. (sigh)

In 3rd grade, my mother was once again called to the school to speak with my teacher who told her “Buddy should be removed from normal class and maybe put into special education. He’s quite stupid and I don’t think he has the mental capacity to learn.”

That did it!

Needless to say, my mother lost her temper with the teacher. A school psychologist was called in and I was rigorously tested for the next 3 months.

I was given reading tests, writing tests, interest assessments, personality tests, IQ testing, and weekly visits for counseling.

When it was all said and done, the psychologist called a meeting with me, my teacher, and my mother.

Not only …

He told them “You’re right that Buddy should be pulled from your class, but not because he can’t learn. Your class probably bores him.”

Then he informed them that I was reading at a high school level, I was registering 136 on his IQ testing (which apparently meant something), and that I was a visual/active learner that would always have issues with memorizing things that I didn’t find interesting.

More negative

In typical fashion, my teacher’s commentary changed at that point from “He’s stupid” to “He is just not applying himself”. I was given the opportunity to participate in some advanced activities, but I was still required to learn the things that I was struggling with at the start. No one at that time ever mentioned ADD or ADHD and there was no talk of medication.

The torture of public education continued like this until I was 15 years old. That was when I had screwed around so badly that I was going to be held back a year.

I remember thinking to myself that from that moment on I would always be thought of as “dumb” because my twin sister was going to be a year ahead of me in school. So I gave the system the finger, quit school and got a job working at a dog boarding kennel.

Leaving it all behind

I went to an adult education class at 17 and got a GED because I thought that I might need it someday.

Then I had an opportunity to get into construction and never looked back at education.

editor: How familiar does this sound to you? I mean, not the details, but the progression, and the attitudes, and okay, yes, the details, in broad strokes, too. How did you deal? How did Buddy deal? Our friend will be back in a few days with a second part to this post. Stay tuned. kb

 

 

Practicing Stoic, Substance use Counselor, Construction worker, Mechanic, Artist, Computer Technician, Man of Faith, Loving Husband, Entrepreneur, Program Developer, Inventor, and Self-proclaimed Maniacal Crackpot, Buddy is impulsively curious with an insatiability for knowledge.

“I am always far more concerned with all the things that I DON’T yet know, rather than with the things that I have already learned.” He has dedicated his life to helping the hopeless and leaving the world a better place that when he found it.