T w e n t y S i d e d

My dad visits from time to time. He lives mostly in Greensboro North Carolina, but once in a while he makes the trip to Pennsylvania. He'll visit us half a dozen times before vanishing again for a couple of years. He likes to visit us around Christmas. He tries to give us gifts, but the clothes he buys us are always too small. I assume this is because he got the gifts for us two years earlier and is only giving them to us now. (Much later, I'll realize he did this because he simply couldn't grasp how ridiculously fast kids grow.)

Just after the new year we get word that Dad is in the hospital, and he's been there for at least a couple of weeks. His legs and his right arm were broken. Only his left arm â€" the one that's paralyzed â€" was spared. His condition is serious enough that he needed to be sent to the more advanced hospital in Pittsburgh. We visit him, and I'm terrified when I see his condition. Much of his body is encased in plaster.

Dad is a man who loves coffee, enjoys smoking, and (as I'll discover later) craves alcohol. Here in the hospital, denied the use of his limbs, he is denied access to all of this. Someday he will find the strength to give up on the booze, and use the other two to soothe himself. Right now, he is without all three. He is a man tormented, and I can tell.

I don't really know him very well, but Mom comments now and again how much I look like him, or talk like him, or laugh like him. I know I'm patterned after him in some way, that there is some relationship between who he is and who I am. Or perhaps, who I will be. I don't understand it, but I know this connection exists. Seeing him broken and ruined is like seeing myself broken and ruined. I feel very small, and helpless, and aware of my mortality.

He explains to Mom how the injury took place: He was leaving our house after his Christmas visit, when he was hit by a truck. He doesn't know who hit him. The driver took off.

It will be years before I learn the other half of this story.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Autoblography Part 19: Four Dollars”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I am fifteen years old, attending eighth grade. It’s 1985. My brother Daniel is born. Back to the Future will premiere later this year.

I’m still in the Special Education program, although I don’t have any Special Ed classes. My Special Ed handler looks at my grades, and my test results, and then works with me to figure out where I might need help and where I might benefit from more direct instruction. I really like having an adult speak with me and involve me in my education like this, instead of being shoved around the system like a bit of paperwork.

I find myself attracted to the Special Ed classes, because I feel much more relaxed in the smaller groups, and also because the work is so dang easy. I also enjoy having an adult engage me directly. I am content to slack off and remain in Special Ed, perhaps even hoping that I’ll get pulled out of a few regular classes and put into Special Education curriculum.

I’m a bit more socially developed, and it’s easier for adults to judge my intelligence by talking to me. My teacher is also armed with my standardized test scores, and she is too wise to fall for my slacking. She can see clearly that there is a massive disparity between my ability and my performance. That gap might have been muddled in those years when I had a bad home life, intense social dysfunction, and a nervous system full of drugs, but it’s pretty clear now that my scholastic failures have nothing to do with me finding the material to be too difficult.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Autoblography Part 18: Drills”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.