 "gifted"
When I went to kindergarten my teacher thought I was kind of lost and confused. I never knew what circle of kids to be in or what line to line up in. Because of this my teacher tested me for SLD, which was a special program for dumb kids.
But to everyone's surprise, it turned out that I was ELP--which meant I was actually smart in some sort of special way. Another common phrase for this is "gifted."
Before long I was going to gifted classes. I got to leave my regular classes for a day and go to the other side of the school to learn and create and be gifted with other gifted kids. I thought it was pretty cool because we got to sit on bean bags, or on the floor if we wanted to. And if you had some sort of silly idea the teacher would listen to you intently and tell you how great and imaginative you were.
It wasn't until I was grown up that the gifted program seemed, in retrospect, kind of strange in certain ways. It seemed like we were always studying and discussing paranormal phenomenon: esp, the pyramids, UFOs, big foot, crop circles, spontaneous combustion, Atlantis, etc. I asked myself, why would you take "smart" kids, set them aside from their peers, and pump them all full of weird and spookie propaganda? Were we some sort of government experiment? Some sort of X-Files for kids? It's really hard to say.
All I know is this:
They stopped teaching ELP, or gifted programs after 9th grade. I think "gifted" kids would be most prone to get beat up at the highschool level. And maybe the X-File budget money dried up by then.
Whatever effect the gifted program had on my mind and my life, it certainly wasn't a sling shot to academic or financial success. I flunked out of FSU in 1988 with a .25. From there I descended into a lost and confused slacker existence of working menial jobs and moving from one low rent apartment to the other (all within the city of St. Petersburg). Meanwhile, I still felt somehow gifted inside and would write dilligently in little notebooks, recording thoughts, poems, songs, and bold and ambitious plans. Occasionally I would bust out with some sort of wild art project, like building a giant pyramid out of stolen plywood and canvas, or putting dozens of brightly colored mannequin heads along the side of a busy road.
To this day, I am not that concerned about getting a real job with benefits, or having a normal family life because deep down inside I feel like I am "gifted".
One day my gift will be unwrapped. One day my gift and I will take over the world.
8:26:55 PM 
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