Left-Handed Engineers From MARZ
Monologue - Zephyr's childhood

I didn't go to a real kindergarten. From age 3 until I entered first grade, I was in one of those early intervention programs. Everyone thought I was retarded because I was such an apathetic kid, but besides that, I was classically 'high risk'.

I only remember bits and pieces, especially from the first couple of years. Most of what I know I learned during my mother's drunken rants, when she'd list everything she could think of that I'd done to ruin her life. I know, for instance, that I hadn't learned to walk or even stand up by the time I entered the program; I mostly just sat in one spot and screamed when anyone tried to force me to move. I spoke very articulately, but only to myself. I didn't care to interact with people. I can tell you why, even without remembering: I wasn't stupid, just scared. My mother punished me for simply being present, and not just when I was little. She still tries, occasionally.

There were several teachers at any given time, but the only one I really remember is Mrs. Belding. She was a large, soft black woman who was strong enough to carry me and comfortable to hug. She never yelled at me or punished me, even when I pushed her limits. But she rewarded me for everything positive I accomplished.  I credit her for introducing me to the idea that I could do things for myself.

Sometimes she gave me cookies or other snacks as rewards. That was against the rules, but I wasn't exactly well-fed, and she always did it on the sly. That meant the world to me, as well as I could understand it; she and I shared a secret ritual. When I was five I got glasses but my mother never made me wear them. Mrs. Belding got me into the habit by giving me a snack every time I remembered them on my own.

She was the one who convinced me to walk on my own, too. I don't know how she did it. All I remember was being terrified. If I fell, I just knew my mother would slap me around and remind me how useless I was. Not that she didn't do it anyway, but doing nothing was generally safer than doing anything.

And I don't think she ever knew it, but Mrs. Belding taught me to read. At storytime I'd be right up there on her lap where I could see the words in the book. By the time I entered first grade, I was just about functionally literate. But even back then I knew to hide my intellect. I purposely performed badly on the placement tests and got stuck in Special Ed. I suppose being pigeonholed as a Special Ed student harmed me in some ways - getting into college, for instance - but it was an ideal situation in which to pursue my own education.

In first grade I was largely ignored, which suited me just fine. Expectations were low. I was also the quietest student in the class by far, and you know what they say about squeaky wheels. So for the most part I got to learn at my own pace. And when I was in a bad mood, I was free to do relatively nothing.

However, if I wanted something, I was expected to use my own means to get it. If I wanted to eat lunch, for instance, I had to get up and go with the class to the cafeteria. I wasn't used to that, but the more I got used to it, the more frequently I allowed myself to want things. Pretty soon I found my niche as the class bookcase tyrant, which wasn't as interesting as it sounds because I was the only one in the class who could read. Most of the other kids were still struggling to understand why they should care what an A looks like. I think a couple of them had trouble comprehending 2D in general.

Of course, being upwardly mobile was still anything but easy. My mother used to buy me these oversized workboots that not only fit badly, but were painful and heavy. I suppose I should appreciate her for trying, though. My heels are a little, um, understated, and then there's the partial adactyly thing I apparently inherited from my father (or so my mother says) and exacerbated, I believe, by my FAE (thanks, Mom!). My mother's way of dealing with this was to cram cotton balls into all the empty spaces in my boots, which was better than nothing.

By the way, if anyone knows a blond man between the ages of 55 and 60 who is missing some toes, named Lenny or Denny or Larry or something, he might be my father.

I'm pretty sure the FAE was responsible for screwing up my hands, too. I had such lousy small motor skills that the People Who Should Know decided unquestionably that I'd never learn to write. As a result, nobody even bothered to try to teach me to hold a pencil. They seemed to figure that sitting me down and inundating me with non-interactive information would suffice. I wasn't the only student in the class with this problem, so it wasn't any big deal to them. But it was a huge deal to me. Whenever I saw a classmate drawing pictures with crayons, I'd get insanely envious. I wanted to draw pictures too. There were so many thoughts and feelings I couldn't express verbally.

So I tried and tried, and eventually I learned to  hold the pencil between my first two, braced against the outside of my thumb. Once I solved that problem, I went wild. Suddenly I was capable of reproducing all of those letters I'd been studying and combining them into my own stories. Eventually my handwriting even became legible.

I especially became obsessed with drawing pictures, especially of dinosaurs and monsters. I was a monster movie fanatic and especially loved anything that portrayed the monster as the good guy. I taught myself to draw by studying structure; if I knew the exact placement and shape of each part, I could concentrate fully on encouraging my pencil to actually get there. My drawings were nothing outstanding, but they represented a great deal of obsessive effort on my part.

I had accomplished all this by the end of first grade. Second grade was more of the same, with the same teachers and most of the same students. Those were really good times, considering. But before second grade was entirely over, they ended.

My mother and sister and I were living with Portia's father at the time. At home, I was effectively a ghost. My mother tried to ingratiate Claudio with the attitude, "Look at our beautiful little daughter; never mind the other kid." Claudio really did care about Portia, but it wasn't enough to make up for the trouble Mom's addictions caused. I don't know what the last straw was, but at about the time I turned 8, we were booted out.

The homeless shelter was the single worst place I'd ever been at that time in my life. Instead of being ignored and quietly tolerated, I was incessantly gawked at, harrassed, and bossed around. It was the first time I'd ever been expected to follow rules; my mother's discipline had always been arbitrary and unpredictable, and at school I had been expected to use my own motivation. And everyone was morbidly curious about the funny-looking blond kid who shuffled when he walked and refused to speak to anyone but his little sister.

Portia was my guardian angel. For whatever reason, long ago she had sided with me in the neverending battle betwen myself and our mother. She learned how to verbally defend me and how to draw attention to herself when I was getting too much. She turned temper tantrums into an art form. I taught her all the obscenities I knew, but she was much more a natural at it than I was. She became known as the adorable, foul-mouthed, smartass little terror, and nobody dared cross her... even to get to me.

Since then, Portia has joked about having had brother worship all her life. That just amazes me. I should have been the one worshipping her.

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