Way back when I was in elementary school (a period I seem doomed to revisit over and over), I had two distinct problems.

On the one hand, I was extraordinarily bright. Could read before I even entered school, knew math up to but not including fractions, and so forth and so on.

On the other hand, I was extraordinarily clumsy. I couldn’t catch a ball. My penmanship was atrocious. Anything involving fine motors skills was near impossible for me. I ran into things. I tripped a lot. I has hopeless in gym.

And the thing is, I arrived at school that way as well. I’m not sure why. But even when I was your average happy kid playing with my friends Tammy and Janet, I wasn’t very coordinated. I was happier holding the handle of the jump rope than jumping it. I fell over when I tried to play hopscotch. Everyone assumed I would grow out of it.

But I didn’t. At least, not entirely.

So my school, Parkside Elementary, decided to tackle these problems separately. In Grade 2, I spent part of my day in regular class, and part of the day in rehab of sorts for my twin issues.

For the “too smart for my own good” issue, I went to Mister Matthews, and we played backgammon, and talked. That was it. That was my school’s idea of a gifted student’s program. We’d play backgammon, we (mostly he) would chat, and he would let me win.

I know without the possibility of doubt that he was letting me win because to this day I don’t know how to play backgammon. I honestly never knew what the hell was going on in the game. My mind has never taken very well to that kind of strategy.

I can barely comprehend checkers.

For my other problem, my motor issues, I went to a therapist, a woman whose name I have forgotten (grr), a woman with big eyes and a big mouth who was from Jamaica. It was her job to get me to be able to catch a ball and write legibly.

And to my shame, I fought her the whole time.

Not out of spite or rebelliousness, but because to my mind, she was someone who was always asking me to do things I didn’t want to do and which made me frustrated and angry and sad, and so I resisted her every inch of the way by being whiny and difficult and resistant. Day in and day out, she would toss a ball at me and sit me down to do writing exercises involving these styrofoam squares that had the letters of the alphabet cut out of them, so all I had to do was move my pen on paper through these and I would make the letter perfectly.

I suppose the idea was that by doing that, I would build up muscle memory of the motions needed to make the letters properly and then be able to do it without assistance. I imagine for a lot of kids, that would have worked.

But the problem was between my eyes and my hands. Still is. Plus, again, I was stubborn and resistant and so on.

And that’s the part I feel guilty about. Because it’s clear from my memories that I ran that poor woman ragged. I wore her out. Every therapy session was a battle of wills and when it comes to those, I am a natural champion. So over time she became more and more exasperated with me and my attitude, not to mention my lack of progress.

I can only assume that her training had not prepared her for a kid like me. Honestly, I don’t think it possibly could have. I was too much of an extreme outlier. Like I have said before, stubbornness and intelligence are a bad combination to have when you are a kid because you are fully equipped to resist anything you don’t feel like doing and there are some cases where being able to be forced to do things is a good thing. It’s how you learn that you actually can do things which you don’t think you can do if you just stick with it and keep trying.

But I was the impossible child. Nobody could reach me. I had absolutely no fear of adults, I saw the arbitrariness of rules and authority, and I was too clever to be dominated intellectually. My position was that I wanted to be dealt with rationally and reasonably (like at home), and anything else was resisted or ignored.

No wonder people ended up giving up on me. I wore them out. I proved to them over and over that they couldn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do, and with each “victory”, I essentially punished them for trying.

What else could they do?

And sure, it’s easy to say that it was the school’s job to handle me and by not being able to do so, the school system failed me. This is absolutely true, as far as it goes. In a perfect world, there would have been people with the strength of mind and power of personality to put me in my place, a place in which I would have undoubtedly been a much happier and healthier kid.

I might even have gotten over myself, which is a healthy thing for anyone.

But no. I was impossible to deal with. Impossible to dominate. Two of my favorite people from my childhood, my babysitter Betty and my fifth grade teacher Mrs. Rogers, were people with strong personalities and minds who could, at least partially, put me in my place and calm me down.

And I loved them for it.

But I still feel bad for that poor woman. I think by the end of our time, she had just plain given up. She had come in with simple therapeutic goals : get me to be able to catch the ball eight times out of ten, and get me to the point where I could write a readable sentence or two.

It’s something she had done many times before, and I assume that, unless I soured her on her career choice entirely, she went on to do it many more times after me.

But I can’t imagine she remembers me fondly. In fact, I doubt she likes to remember me at all.

I was such a weird kid.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.