Another problem with “gifted”
How many of us odd people passed as just smart, or just acting weird because of being too smart for normal behavior and classes?
And how many of us knew we’d better fake being good at academic subjects, and pretend to know things we really didn’t? Because if we didn’t, then we’d just be freaks with no obvious reason, and no way to make it acceptable?
Because we saw what happened to kids like us who *weren’t* considered gifted.
It is really, really scary to think what would’ve happened to me if I weren’t as smart as I am.
I didn’t have to do a lot of faking being good at academics…I was, and I played that game to the hilt because it was the only one I could, and I knew that that was how I was getting the hell away from a place where I was never going to be able to have a real life for myself.
But I did indeed see that other people’s arbitrary perceptions about your intelligence could and did have seriously bad consequences. As it was, almost every member of my family managed bizarrely to treat me utterly simultaneously as ridiculously brilliant and r******d. And without the ridiculously brilliant, there would’ve been only the latter, and to think what could’ve been done to me over and above what was, is scary as shit.
