THAT DAY

I'm reading "Beggars in Spain" by Nancy Kress, about a not-so-distant future where a spoonfed, ignorant majority sponges off a gifted working minority--while mocking the few who keep the power and food and entertainment coming. Their contempt for the gifted who feed them brings up flashbacks of my own childhood experiences of normal people's fear and resentment of prodigies...

THAT NIGHT

I'm on my parents' street, except the hill slopes the wrong way. A gang of clever young men have deduced I'm not a normal human. They jump me, and demand that I hand over the key to my powers! I don't know what key they mean--my abilities are inherent. They seem to think "having abilities" is like "having a car."

Rather than get beaten up, I toss the contents of my pockets down the steep street. Marbles and coins roll... they chase. Freed for a moment, I turn and run into the wind, flapping my arms hard as I can. And I take off! Not much lift--only rise if I go all out. I worry one of them may have a gun, though I'm otherwise out of reach now, around ten feet up. I skim off around the corner... free!

Later, I come back. They're lying in wait for me. This time, having nothing left to give them, I just laugh angrily. "You fought over the crap in my wallet didn't you? Looking for the key. Here." I give them one last marble I missed, still in my pocket. "You happy now?" I say nastily. "Feel smart? Ready to fly now?"

The leader finally asks it. "You just are that way. You're not a man."

"I'm just that way. I'm not a man." I have mixed feelings saying this. Warning bells go off--feels GOOD to identify as a man, it's a gender stretch for me. Feels bad to deny it.

But these guys aren't talking gender, they're talking race. In this context, I'm telling the truth. They're not like me, and they have to live with it, because they can't steal it from me.

Because it IS me.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Exposed: I'm hanging a show of my dream-art, and I'm uneasy; the work bares so much about me, in such a public place. And some of it's about growing up a child prodigy. Are my fears so foolish? "Beggars in Spain" reminds me how average people can stereotype and resent the gifted.
• Freak: I identified with the child prodigies in "Beggars in Spain", but I feel inferior, comparing my (real) gifts and differences from normal people with the prodigies' greater (but fictional) gifts. The dream pushes this, satirically. I'm not much of a superman--why, I can barely even fly!
• Marbles = brains. Losing your marbles! Only I'm not losing them... they want to TAKE mine! Lobotomize me down to normality. Clipping your wings off may please nonfliers, even if they can't use them. Now they won't feel troubled; now they won't feel stupid; now they won't be reminded that flight is possible.
• ACTION: If you're gifted, keep your eyes open. Lobotomy happens! Not just up dark alleys. At work, in school, most definitely on TV. See it and name it what it is--persecution of a minority. You.

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