Letter 14 – Third Grade Phone Calls

 

Garrett,

You were in third grade when problems with school started resulting in phone calls to home, and meetings with teachers. You were frustrating for them. You weren’t a bad kid. You were never mean, never malicious. You never hurt anyone. You were big, in your personality. You were this big, big energy that could not be contained. And you wanted to do what you wanted to do. You didn’t listen, beyond the briefest moment to hear what you needed to know to get done whatever needed to get done, and then you went and did your own thing. Which usually involved interfering with others in your pursuit to have fun.

I remember you saying to me one time, I just want to have fun. And I said something like, sometimes things aren’t fun, Garrett. You just have to do them anyway. I don’t think you ever believed this. I think you actively resisted this notion and went about your life with the only goal being to have a good time. It was your motivator and your imperative. I constantly flipflopped in my feelings about this. On the one hand, you cannot just go about having fun all your life. There are plenty of things about life that are not fun, and you just have to do them. Dishes. Homework. Laundry. Cleaning your room. Things that just need to be done. And on the other hand, sometimes I thought, does he have something right that we don’t? Does he understand something that would probably be better for all of us to understand? Maybe he knows something the rest of us should learn.

It was hard, communicating with the school, and with the teachers. I sympathized with them. They couldn’t teach their classes well because you were such a disruption. Constantly disrupting the class and distracting the students from what the teachers were trying to do. It drove them up a wall and you displayed not a care in the world for any of it. The thing is, is that you were a gifted student. How they tried to get you to go deeper, do more, delve into the subject matter beyond what was required. But you weren’t having it. I think your stance may have been, I’ve done what was required and now I’m free. Why would I do anything more than that? And so, you were free to bother everyone else with your joking around, and your infectious smile, and your total lack of concern for the efforts of your teachers.

You would push and push and push right up to the brink of a breaking point, and then, as if you sensed bad consequences about to explode all around you, suddenly you’d self-correct and rein yourself back in. Peace for your teachers. For a minute. And the slowly you’d start all over and the frustration would build again. I was exasperated with you, and I think you were frustrated that you couldn’t just be whoever you wanted to be. That you couldn’t just do as you wanted.

Kevin and I were beginning to get the idea that maybe you wouldn’t be able to function very well in our regular, structured society, and we tried to always to fix it, fix it, fix it. Maybe it was a mistake. I couldn’t tell you. But I will say that I wish I had been less concerned with the concerns of others than with whatever it was that made you, you. I wish I had been more open to who you were, instead of trying to guide you into accepting the mundane. But I was concerned for you. I wanted you to learn how to operate within the expected. How hard could that be for someone as smart and talented as you?

That approach didn’t work well and if I had it to do all over again, I would wish myself to be more supportive of you, and to see you, in all of your frustrating, gut wrenching glory. Would it have made everything worse, giving you free reign to do whatever you wanted? I don’t know. Would it have made things better, for you and for us as a family? I don’t know that, either.