At age seven I had my first exposure to public school and, 
consequently, alien children. I’d been home schooled and taken to the 
academy prior to then. The change came about due to the sudden onset of 
family migraines and blood diseases, and I was sent to live with a distant 
cousin until the solar flares, magnetic disturbances or whatever subsided. 
Presumably, this cousin had not a nome of those genes responsible for the 
physical ailments and extrasensory endowments plaguing the rest of my 
family tree, and neither had I. I think the relation was by something 
considered an unfortunate marriage; I was often referred to as a throwback 
in similar company with this cousin, though I had not met him before.



     	The cousin and I got on famously once he realized I was just weird. 
He protected me from the horrors of corporal punishment at the hands of 
the school system for as long as he was able. I couldn’t understand why 
the teachers needed me to answer them verbally. I thought that was rather 
odd for a teacher to require, since they were there to suit my learning 
needs, after all, and speaking was not my forte. They liked parent-teacher 
conferences with the cousin. I am certain that I held the record for that 
particular school. Fifteen conferences during my six-months sortie there 
since some of the teachers I encountered seemed determined to make me a 
study of abnormal psychology. Autistic, apraxic, antisocial, and apathetic 
were just some of the nasty “A” words they tried to fit me into. On each 
counseling-oriented visit to the school's therapist, the cousin and I 
could sufficiently prove my sufficiency. After four or six failed attempts 
to label me, --which were requested each by different teachers-- punishment 
was deemed necessary. I became a "discipline case" as my label. Plainly I 
was being difficult on purpose, since there was no easy or “innocent” 
medical determination on me. Further dysfunctional aspersions were 
attempted to provide explanation for my disobedient behaviour. The cousin 
seemed completely and unswervingly convinced that I was OK as if to spite 
my accident of birth among the closer relatives. He declined additional 
medical or psychologic testing of me with depositions to the school board 
as such.



     	I suppose I shouldn’t really complain, as I quickly did discover that 
I have a forte. The cousin spoke less and less around or to me and I almost 
never needed to use words with him beyond our initial meeting. My forte 
was, then, of a sort of invisibility to those post adolescent of the alien 
kind rather than any profound gift with nonverbal communication, as one 
might suppose. I was smart, no one debated that element; I could get to 
the grits of any situation quickly, exercise the tiniest bit of effort to 
resolve it, and be back in my own little world in amazing time. Perhaps I 
was also wicked clever. I am certain I pulled off many nefarious plans 
without being caught, but I don’t have the proof as I didn’t stay around 
mentally to find out about it. For a fact, I disdained being among people 
-- cousins, alien or close kin, no difference. It was a large portion of my 
existence to plan and map the world around me to be more to my liking, 
complete with global takeover schemes I had no plans to implement. I 
sought to bring out more aspects of my sane inner world onto the largely 
unsuspecting world of alien reality. What confounded the doctors was that 
I always knew the difference between the real world and the world I found 
inside, even when it became difficult to draw me from my shell for comment. 
And what really upset them, I am sure, is that occasionally they forgot I 
was there, though they were being paid to tend me. Every so often I would 
emerge from my sanctuary for a flash of correction, having spotted a chance 
to make this world closer to my imagining. Much of this type of emergence 
in those six months was to provide doctors and other paid professionals 
with “the right answers” to thus ensure my safety from the trials of 
intensive psychotherapy and its pharmaceuticals. My greatest fear was that 
these opportunities would arise too frequently and someone might actually 
realize that I am a solid fixture in their reality, maybe try to speak to 
me more than once.



     	Originally, I was placed in the second grade. For many seven year old 
children this is adequate. When my teachers realized I was bright but quiet 
--observant as they were in their own ways-- I was moved to the fourth 
grade. I suppose my swiftly acquired troublesome status may have helped 
inspire some of the alacrity of that move as well. Anyhow, the fourth grade 
teachers were no more dedicated to me than they were the walls. They seemed 
more tired and uninteresting than the second grade teachers, if that is 
possible beyond my subjective opinion. My grades seemed to zero out and I 
was slid back to the third grade. There I stayed while I was considered a 
probationary student, whatever that actually did mean. I wonder if they 
thought I could be “scared straight”; I could tell that their vague threats 
of expulsion and the horrid life of ignorance I could lead if I didn’t 
follow their automaton-producing rules was bluff after bluff every step of 
the way, but they persisted with passionate devotion. Nonetheless, I knew 
I had final control of my future, not them and their artificial tests, 
grades, and bell curves.



     	In fairness, the teachers were good; it was their precious method which 
caused everyone strife. The odds were pretty well stacked against the 
teachers themselves since the effective ones had to be insanely devoted in 
order to find ways to get around the overtaxing of their personal resources 
through making up for inadequate materials, having too many pupils at once, 
fighting poor public opinion and placating whining parents who constantly 
insisted upon instant miracles. My classmates were horrid and unsympathetic 
monsters. For a fact the school system, its punishments and indifference 
were far less distracting to me than the other children. The aliens were 
demanding and immature. Their insecurities forced upon them a need to 
squash me straight away. And I had the misfortune to be in a school 
containing large families, thus news of me and my sheltered life spread 
through all the grades and across the segregated lunch times. No amount of 
grade-swapping shell games could save me from their mob knowledge. As the 
cousin tried to protect me from these further beatings and humiliations my 
danger seemed only to increase, so I asked him to cease at once. He did and 
in general, once the teachers discovered I had become a scapegoat, they 
gave me a bit of leeway.



     	The only one at school who was treated worse than me was Lisa. I first 
saw her wise brown eyes peering at me from a streaming mat of hair after 
she’d been shoved to the dirt on the playground. She knew I was on the edge 
of becoming one of her kind, yet she didn’t draw me in to her disaster as I 
have seen so many other scapegoats do; the only sure method I have 
discovered for breeding scapegoats is to be befriended by or to befriend 
one. She was treated far worse than me, probably because she was from a 
very poor family and she had just always been a scapegoat. I soon 
discovered that she lived near the cousin. Since I was both grateful and 
sad that she stayed away from me at school, I “accidentally” visited her 
one day. I knew I would be doomed if she decided to cling to me because of 
this choice, but I had determined that I surely wouldn’t be around long 
enough for it to affect me permanently. I simply couldn’t imagine that my 
whole family but this cousin might die off from whatever was affecting 
them, therefore I could and would eventually be freed, whereas she was 
rather irrevocably stuck.



     	Thus began a long and meaningful friendship. I learned immediately that 
she was as strange as I, as out of the mold from among her family as I, and 
as perpetually and completely unprepared to live among the aliens. I felt a 
strange relationship with her that I had not missed prior to then by the 
fact that I went entirely unaware that such connection was possible. The 
first time she hid from the doorbell I knew her better than she’d been 
known before; one of my biggest fears at the cousin’s house was how to 
properly answer the door or the phone. It just wasn’t done in anywhere near 
the same manner amid aliens and all of the infinite confusing varieties he 
used did not seem to have any correlation with what I was used to among my 
closer relatives. She trusted me without testing. Of course; she is 
psychic, which also explains why her life among aliens was so traumatic and 
dire. It also explains why she persisted in avoiding association with me at 
school, since she knew I would be doomed alongside her for such a decision. 
She, as usual, bore the brunt of society’s anger with itself because they 
--the aliens-- could somehow sense without psychic that she represented 
what they so frequently yearned to be. But, of course, even beyond being 
advantaged as they were not, she needn’t try so hard as they might for the 
dreams they might pursue, and she would not fail so miserably as they 
doubtless would upon trying. The awkwardness and frailty I saw in her among 
the aliens when we were seven helped me begin to adjust and understand the 
world of the aliens. Through my adolescence (which was so utterly 
incomprehensible to my close kin that it almost warranted me a quarantine 
with the cousin) I learned how to convince the aliens that I am something 
of a mutant or hybrid, simultaneously psychic and alien. I can behave as 
and enact the therapy of either setting at will, remaining neither psychic 
nor alien in the eyes of the aliens for any indefensible amount of time. It 
cannot be any other way for me, else I betray their fine sensibilities. 
This understanding has immeasurably improved my ability to travel between 
environments, both knowing their own version of “the truth” of me, 
comfortably, safely and well outside of my favored world. Ultimately, I 
have become useful to my kin by acting as a liaison to or spy within the 
context of the aliens.



     	Today I will marry my best friend. My family is deliriously happy; 
perhaps there is rescue for me after all. Certainly there is greater hope 
for the salvation of this particular branch of the family tree. The cousin 
is part of the wedding party and is also delighted with my choice. He 
remembers Lisa and my long association through mail and occasional visits 
during her summer vacation. She is brilliant in intellect, luminescent in 
her gown and fantastic in continuing to bear love to me --incredibly 
bringing forth love from the typically unemotional me. The problem is that, 
all throughout our lives together, I have not been able to convince her 
that I am not psychic.

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