Left-Handed Engineers From MARZ
Childhood tales
Zephyr grinned down at the young boy. “Be good, Joseph. Take care of
your mother. See you in a few weeks... or should I say, see you next year!”
Satisfied that Joseph had caught his joke, he turned to the mother. “Make
sure you do like I said and get his reading comprehension tested by someone
who knows what they’re doing.”
“I will,” the woman replied. “Thank you.”
Connor grabbed Zephyr’s bag (it was heavier than it looked) and followed
Zephyr out to the car. Things had really perked up since they had arrived
at the client’s house. Connor knew it wasn’t his responsibility to keep
his boss happy, but he couldn’t help trying. And it did hurt a little that
after two hours straight of trying and failing, he was outclassed by a nine-year-old
quadriplegic. But then, he knew the odds were stacked against him.
He slipped into the driver’s seat and glanced at Zephyr. “Now THAT is
why I love this job,” Zephyr told him. “That kid is brilliant. The problem
is that his teachers are focusing his education on action rather than information.
They’re trying to get him better at doing things. But he’s already doing
all he can, and he’s bored. He wants to know things. I would bet you a
hundred dollars that if they can balance out his education, he’ll skip a grade.”
“How can you tell?” Connor asked.
“It’s all in the eyes. Did you see his eyes? They were taking everything
in… practically screaming, ‘More stimulus! More stuff to think about!’
He just can’t say so. Everyone is waiting for him to learn to articulate
his thoughts, when all they have to do is look in his eyes. But you don’t
get points for just having thoughts. Thoughts only count if you can say them
out loud. Reginald has the same problem.”
“Can you tell what Reg is thinking by looking at his eyes? I always...
I dunno, maybe I just don’t know what to look for.”
“Nah,” said Zephyr. “He doesn’t use his eyes like that. He usually doesn’t
care what other people think enough to try communicating with them.
He knows he’s smart, so what difference does it make if other people
don’t know? But Joseph, man, he’s dying to tell the world what’s going on
in his head. He just can’t get anyone to listen.”
“How did you learn to listen?” Connor asked as he turned onto the highway.
Zephyr tensed as the car sped up, but kept talking. “I was the same way
when I was a kid. I could speak just fine, but I didn’t bother most of the
time. That’s why I got stuck in special ed... I was uncooperative, noncommunicative,
and poor. That’s a bad combination. They thought I was a retard and the
label stuck.”
“Wow,” said Connor.
“But it was mostly because I got off to a bad start. My mother tried to
kill me when I was a baby. Bet you didn’t know that.”
“No, I didn’t. How?”
Oh, just by neglecting me. Some doctor told her I wasn’t going to survive
when I was born, so she waited for me to die. And waited. But I was a stubborn
little bastard, I guess.” Zephyr laughed. “I don’t remember it, of course,
but it’s the kind of thing that affects you down deep. The rest of my childhood
wasn’t much different, except that she was waiting for me to grow up and
go away.”
“That’s horrible,” Connor gasped. “I had no idea. How did you rise above
that?”
“I realized that the world was full of all sorts of great knowledge, and
that I was smart enough to learn it. That’s one advantage I had over Joseph
– I had the means to seek my own education. I learned to read by the time
I was five and after that, I never stopped sucking the information in.”
“So you proved that you weren’t, um, retarded after all?”
Zephyr shook his head. “No, I didn’t quite manage that. I was in special
classes until I graduated. But that was partially my fault. The school
system tried to mainstream me, but I refused to go along with it. I didn’t
want to have to deal with my peers. I was smart enough to keep up with them,
but they’d never have accepted me. To them, I’d always have the dirty retard
stigma.”
“I… sorta had the same problem too,” Connor offered. “I mean, I took regular
classes and everything, but I was stereotyped as the big dumb guy. I tried
and tried to prove otherwise, but everyone would get all mad… I guess they
thought I was being a big, arrogant, dumb guy. So I learned how to act
like they wanted me to, just so they’d leave me alone.”
“Sucks, don’t it?”
“Yeah. There was this one time… I was a freshman in high school, and a
bunch of my classmates hounded me to try out for the football team. I didn’t
want to, but I did anyway. My brother Mike was on varsity, and I figured
he could help me out.” Connor paused. “Let’s just say I wasn’t a natural
athlete. But nobody has much use for a big dumb guy who can’t play football.
I wanted to be a bookworm. I wanted to join the chess club and mock trial.
I think that’s what I regret most, not doing those things.”
“So what did you do instead?” Zephyr inquired.
“Nothing. I was a bum. I cruised through school and listened to a lot
of music and tried hard not to follow in the footsteps of any of my brothers.”
“How many brothers did you have?”
“Five, all older than me. I adored them, but they all had interests and
identities and I envied that about them. Mike and Evan were the athletes,
Christopher was the musician, Kieran was the genius, and Jamison was the
activist. I was… nothing.”
“My god! Six boys.”
“And three girls. I had one older sister, and the other two were the babies
of the family.”
Zephyr’s jaw dropped. “You coulda populated a friggin’ city! The city
of Flynn.”
Connor chuckled. “It was great. I wouldn’t trade my family for anything.
We didn’t have as much stuff as any of our neighbors… we were the ones who
got five Christmas presents each instead of the 20 or 30 that other kids
got... but we had each other. No matter what you needed, somebody in the
family could do it.”
“Cool,” Zephyr said.
“Yeah, it was. How about you? Got any siblings?”
“One sister. Portia. She rocks. We were little terrors together. Oh,
the stories I could tell you...”
“Tell me one now,” Connor said.
“Really? Okay, but then you have to tell me one about you and your clan.”
“Deal.”
Zephyr paused and then broke into a wide grin. “There was one time, when
I was nine and Portia was seven...”
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