فصل 03

3

When I was about five years old, we moved to Southampton, New York, presumably to live in a house you couldn’t dive off of, and I started kindergarten. One day, during my first few weeks of school, the teacher left the room (leaving youngsters alone with open jars of paste was also very 1970s), and when she came back, she found me reading a book to the class. At first she thought maybe I’d memorized it from having it read to me at home, but after I wowed them with a cold read of another one—take that, Green Eggs and Ham!—they had to admit I could actually read. My father had read to me every night for as long as I could remember, and at some point, I guess, I just sort of got it. But this confused the teacher and the school, because I’d unintentionally undermined their entire plan for the year. If I wasn’t in kindergarten to be taught to read, could they really justify sharing and finger painting as a comprehensive year-long curriculum? If not, what were they supposed to do with me?

I was sent to the office of a groovy guy named Mike. I don’t know what Mike’s actual job at the school was, but I remember sitting in his office drawing pictures of my feelings or whatever (the seventies!), while he leaned back in his chair with his feet up on the desk, which is how I knew he was groovy in the first place. This went on for days. Mike kept asking me if I was bored in kindergarten. Not really, Mike—have you seen the awesome books they have in there? And that’s about all I remember. But by the end of the week, I had apparently convinced Mike that making chains out of construction paper for an entire year would be beneath me intellectually, and he sent me on to first grade.

During my first day in the new class, the teacher held a mock election and asked each student to come up and mark on the blackboard whom they’d vote for in the upcoming presidential election: McGovern or Nixon (the seventies!). McGovern won by a landslide (not in real life but, weirdly, in this class), and I was one of very few kids who voted for Nixon. This gave me an uneasy feeling. Even though I had no idea who either of the candidates was, or even what the word “candidate” meant, I knew that in not being part of the majority, I’d somehow made the wrong choice. Also, how could the entire room not vote for a guy named Nixon, because seriously, how cool was it to have the letter x in your name? That this distinguishing feature didn’t similarly blow everyone else’s mind the way it did mine was my first indication that I was in over my head.

Initially, skipping a grade seemed like an accomplishment of some sort, but what I remember most was how totally baffled and uncomfortable I felt, especially for the first few weeks. I’d never really had trouble fitting in before, and now, instead of feeling special or gifted, I just felt awkward and out of place. Suddenly this thing that had made me stand out and had impressed some people now made me feel like an oddball.

But skipping a grade also gave me the sense, throughout my entire childhood, that I’d been given an “extra” year. It floated around in my head like a lucky coin, something I wanted to hold on to as long as I could, until the day I really needed to use it. I don’t know why exactly, but somehow I got the idea that life was just a massive competition to get to some sort of finish line, like one long extended season of The Amazing Race. In skipping a grade, I’d been given the ultimate Fast Forward. This would ensure I’d be able to skip over whatever the life equivalent is of the shemozzle race in New Zealand, beating out even the most awesome teams like the Twinnies or the Afghanimals, then arrive first and be met by an adorable gnome, an oversized cardboard check for a million dollars from Phil, and a trip from Travelocity.

There were a few years in there where I mostly forgot about the whole skipping-a-grade thing. In elementary and middle school I spent time riding horses every weekend, sometimes working in a barn after school, and having birthday slumber parties during which we’d sneak out in the middle of the night to go pajama streaking. (We’re running! Around the block! In our pajamas! The excitement!) I also enjoyed such sophisticated pastimes as toilet-papering people’s houses (this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing in my group of friends—in fact, it was a good sign if people cared enough to TP your house; I remember praying I’d be TP’d more), acting out elaborate soap operas involving my troll dolls, making horse blankets for my thirty-seven Breyer horses, and recording Judy Garland movies off the television with my red plastic Radio Shack tape recorder. I’d stay up late, listening to my cassette tapes over and over, which is why I’m happy to announce I can still perform “The Trolley Song” for you right now!

With my high starched collar,

And my high-top shoes,

And my hair piled high upon—

What’s that? Oh, okay, you’re probably right, let’s do it later.

Anyway, my dad met my stepmother around this time, and they got married, and we moved farther out into the suburbs of Virginia, partly so I’d be closer to the barn where I rode, which was ironic since it wouldn’t be long before I’d replace all the time I’d been spending there with all the time I’d spend doing school plays.

Skipping a grade came up again during my sophomore year of high school, when everyone but me started getting their driver’s license. I wanted off the school bus badly, and not being able to drive until later than everyone else seemed an unfair penalty for being able to read a little bit before them.