Art from the 1961 Crusader yearbook. Apparently there was an artistically gifted student in the class of 1961, 3 years before me. So it seems, therefore, that not everyone in the school always was already dead. David Lee Maulsby (Senior picture caption: "The three-toed tree toad sings his ode to the moon."); I never met him – I never had any interaction with any student outside my graduating class, although I must have passed some of them in the hall, etc (and, a fortiori, I never had any contact with any female from the affiiated "girls" school" just down the hill from the "boys" school" – Purdah USA 4 me).

Nor that the only thing anyone there could imagine was another shiny plated varsity lacrosse or tackle football winning team trophy cup.

I was not a gifted child: I had no gifts to give my teachers

Mr. Maulsby seems to me (BMcC[18-11-46-503]) to have been an instance of what I was not: a "gifted" child, i.e.: a child gifted with specific useful skill talent: in his case, drawing ability. The teaches could (1) understand this and (2) appreciate it but also (3) not feel threatened by it. A home run!

These benighted adolts could comprehend a talent like drawing ability: it's how people recorded what things look like before Nicéphore Niépce. It's like lacrosse ability: not everybody has it but it stands out in a blatant way that even these teaches could see. They could appreciate it: Obviously not everybody has it, and it contributed into their social world, too: the better the drawing skill the more realistic (and/or entertaining) the pictures the person can draw.

But also: It did not threaten them. Nobody feels ashamed of themselves for not being able to do freehand drawing or even for not being a stellar lacrosse player: these things are gifts from God [or Fortuna] which do not affect what you "are" as a person — apart from the skill, you're just like everybody else, i.e.: especially themselves. A person with such an ancillary difference does not make them feel inferior.

My difference was different: I experienced everything in a different way than them. They could not understand it but if they did it would suggest to them that they were a lower life form, which obviously would not be acceptable to their fragile self-images. Nobody likes to feel inferior. I needed nurturance to fully become the dimensionally not quantitatively better-than-them I had potential to be; not something they would be expected to help make happen, would it be?

A student with a specialized talent like Mr Mamusby was a tool in the teachers' tookbox: it faclitated them to do what they wanted more effectively. Had I been gifed musically, or perhaps even had musical training to gain some passable mastery of the piano not just do Thompson's method and "Anchors away my boys", I might have won benefits for being a useful tool, too. The Choirr Master, Mr. McDorman, had me do a tryout to play the piano for morning student chapel services. I failed shamdfully. Had I been good enough, which probably would not have needed to be very good, my special gifrs would still have been left to rot, but i might have got some of my needs met for meeting one of theirs: Had I been able to play for services in St. Paul's Church perbaps I would have been introduced to daughters of upscale parishioners and found an appropiate intimate partner? But I did not have quantitative talents ("gifts") to help them do what they wanted. I wanted to do something different: I wanted to play a different game in which they woukd not play their well defended exalted roles. I was SOL.

Put up or shut up! What game did I want to play? I was so ignoranced that I had no clue. I did feel I did not want to be played in their game which offered me nothing that appealed to me and hurt me much. But today I can offer a poaaiblity: When Mr. Mike Rentko THREATENED me in 7th grade for deciding to stop writing cursive script (here). Instead he could have respectfully, and even caringly, taken me out of class and set me off on an independent study project on the history of writing, learning about different styles of calligraphy and related matters through the ages, starting from Rome where they did use the latin alphabet. How about that?^[1]