Study? I Think Not.
I was a steady B+ student from whenever-the-hell it is that they started giving out grades until I got out of the hell-hole system that they call education in this country. If I ever got a report card back from the snooty Catholic private school my mother forced me to attend from about 5th to 11th grade that didn’t have scrawled across it somewhere, “Vicki is not working up to her potential.”, I never saw it.
It irked my mother no end because she, a bona-fide “genius”, knew damn well that I spent my free time at home perusing the Encyclopaedia Brittanica and The Books of Knowledge. She knew that my reading and comprehension skills were just dandy and I suspect that she also knew that I clearly just didn’t give a damn. I think that’s what irked her the most.
But I had a problem with school. For one thing, most of what they taught was downright dull compared to what I was reading at home. For another, lies. Well, they called it history. But it was an awful lot of lies, really. And it was making it seem as if killing people was not just OK, but something to be celebrated. Also, we had to open every… damn… boring day by saluting the flag and singing the Star Spangled Banner. I’m sorry, but even I, a kid in elementary school could see through that BS. How did rockets and bombs and generalized murder of the innocent people who were — for Pete’s sake — living here before the arrogant bastards from Europe showed up — become cause for celebration?
And then there was this whole “religion” thing. Catechism. What the hell. I was supposed to learn about this system of… what? I didn’t even know why they were trying to market this particular bill of goods. It made no damn sense to me. Oh, I totally got the idea that there was stuff going on in other dimensions and realms that, as humans, we had no access to… but “God”? Cut me a break. You couldn’t show me this “history” and all the mayhem and murder and tell me that there was some God who was “good” and who was in charge of everything and was still somehow letting all that happen. Not… buying… it. Sorry.
They were trying to brainwash me. That’s how I saw it. So, I read the stuff they gave me, and if I remembered it, great; I’d get it right on a test. And if I didn’t, I just didn’t care. It was all pretty much useless information as far as I was concerned.
As often as I could, I’d fake illness well after my mother — a doctor — had left for work and the “maids” would always let me stay home. I’d either read or, if there was something interesting going on in the world, I’d watch TV. Of all the things I ever watched, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth was the most boring. I didn’t watch for too long; I couldn’t figure why anyone would watch it at all; but the most terrifying thing I watched was the McCarthy hearings.
I knew evil when I saw it because I’d been raised with it. My younger sister and I had been ‘marketed’ to my grandfather’s wealthy friends at least once. Young cunt don’t come cheap, y’know. He’d once been uber-wealthy, himself, and he missed the money. Because our skin was browner than he liked, (Mom had married a Cuban doctor she’d met in med school, but his family’d had money so that was OK.), he saw us as ‘other’ and made use of us. So, when I saw the faces of the men who were questioning the other men who were, essentially, on trial, I recognized that energy. It was bad. It was evil. And I recognized it. I knew it from the woods. I could see that self-centered, I-deserve-to-have-what-I-want look all over them. It scared me that there were more of those kinds of people than just the ones in the woods and these people were in charge of things, of the country I lived in! No wonder the history books were full of such horrifying events; it was coming from the top, down.
I was living in a world where, apparently, evil people were pretending to be good, while other people, with more money than they knew what to do with, were dressing up and putting crowns on their heads like make-pretend while, in all likelihood, the very same kinds of awful people who worked for them were doing all the sorts of things that “history” was saying I should learn.
WHY? Why exactly did I need to learn about that? So I could “learn from their mistakes?” Apparently, nobody else had learned anything from their mistakes except hoe to imitate them. I knew bullshit when I smelled it. That trial validated every feeling I’d had about school. That’s when I stopped even trying to study.
Oh, I’d read. I enjoyed reading. And if I remembered something I’d read — as I did often enough to maintain that B+ average — then good on me? I guess. I’d get a question right and pass a grade and go on to endure more unwanted and, from my point of view, useless schooling. But the choice was not mine to make and so I endured.
Of course, it wasn’t useless, because you can’t get anywhere in the job world unless you can prove that you graduated from some sort of institute of learning, so there’s that. But really? It could have been so much better. I’m sure it could. If I’d known how, I’d probably have headed off in the direction of trying to change things, but I didn’t, and by now I’m old and quite content with my life. I hide as far away from the rest of the world as I can get. I have followed my feisty little heart to heaven on earth and I don’t feel the least bit of remorse for not having studied. It’s done me a world of good.
