Perry Lyman kept me busy listening.
“I’ll spare you the sob story introduction—you’ve probably already heard it through the grapevine—but a couple of years ago I hit a wall. Sensitive there?”
“A little.”
“Bottom line: I reexamined everything. Values. Attitudes. Relationships. Most crucially, I went on medication. Result: I’ve become the man I always wanted to be. I fly and maintain my own small helicopter. I tutor illiterates. I go to church. The stoned neurotic on the water bed is dead and gone.”
I held up my hand to keep my mask from slipping. I wanted all the gas that I could get.
“Which brings me to a question, Justin.”
I waited.
“Have you ever suspected you’re different from otherteenagers? Not as patient. Can’t finish what you start? Terrified of being left alone but angry when you feel crowded?”
He’d nailed me. “All of it.”
“It isn’t your fault,” Perry Lyman said. “It’s mine. I saw the syndrome when you came two years ago. And what did I do? I let you go on suffering. Classic hyperactive teen, textbook attention deficit disorder, and Dr. Counterculture here tried the subconscious suggestion.”
“It worked. I stopped.”
“You switched,” said Perry Lyman. He changed his drill bit. “I want to start you on Ritalin.”
“You’re a dentist, though.”
He stepped on a pedal and revved the drill. “I like to think of myself as more than that.”
The pill was the driest thing I’d ever swallowed and seemed to absorb all the moisture in my throat during its scratchy, slow descent. I drank from the glass of juice Audrey gave me and thought about Garrett Blount from fifth grade, who’d also been diagnosed as hyperactive. Garrett had pierced his own ears with a pencil, Krazy-glued his hands to walls and blackboards, and regularly wet himself in class. I still remembered the puddles under his desk, so hot they gave off visible wisps of steam.
“They’re wrong,” I said to Audrey. “I’m normal. I’m fine.”
She answered me with a story. When I was six yearsold, she said, I’d trimmed our living room carpet with pinking shears because I’d thought it was growing.
I didn’t remember this.
“Or think of when you were ten. The milk phase. You had to pour milk on everything you ate.”
I dropped my head. There was no denying the milk phase.
I was walking to school when I felt the Ritalin hit. The air seemed to thicken and mold itself against me. The sky expanded and revealed its curved shape as my peripheral vision spread and sharpened until I could almost see over my shoulders. Moments later, I noticed my stride had changed. My footsteps felt involuntary, guided, as if governed by magnets buried in the ground. To walk I just had to let myself be pulled.
My first class that morning was English. We were supposed to be reading
Moby Dick
. As Mrs. Rand chalked theme words on the blackboard—Whiteness, Sea vs. Land, Revenge & Pride—I opened my paperback copy for the first time.
“Who’d like to talk on Whiteness?” Mrs. Rand asked.
I opened my mouth and out flowed several ideas I wasn’t even conscious of having thought about. Whiteness stood for eternity, I said. It represented both innocence and extinction.
“I see you read the preface,” Mrs. Rand said.
This wasn’t true. I hadn’t read a line.
It happened again in biology. I pronounced “mitochondria”correctly, despite never having heard it spoken before.
After school, I swept into the house to share my news. I found Joel in front of the TV watching a tape of his serves at tennis camp. The counselors had told him he showed promise but that it was buried under all the weight.
“You’re out of breath,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve changed. I’m better. It works. It really works.”
“Why are your eyes like that?”
“Like what?”
“So huge.”
The conversation depressed me. I felt inside my pants and found the pill I was meant to have taken at noon.
“I’ll spare you the sob story introduction—you’ve probably already heard it through the grapevine—but a couple of years ago I hit a wall. Sensitive there?”
“A little.”
“Bottom line: I reexamined everything. Values. Attitudes. Relationships. Most crucially, I went on medication. Result: I’ve become the man I always wanted to be. I fly and maintain my own small helicopter. I tutor illiterates. I go to church. The stoned neurotic on the water bed is dead and gone.”
I held up my hand to keep my mask from slipping. I wanted all the gas that I could get.
“Which brings me to a question, Justin.”
I waited.
“Have you ever suspected you’re different from otherteenagers? Not as patient. Can’t finish what you start? Terrified of being left alone but angry when you feel crowded?”
He’d nailed me. “All of it.”
“It isn’t your fault,” Perry Lyman said. “It’s mine. I saw the syndrome when you came two years ago. And what did I do? I let you go on suffering. Classic hyperactive teen, textbook attention deficit disorder, and Dr. Counterculture here tried the subconscious suggestion.”
“It worked. I stopped.”
“You switched,” said Perry Lyman. He changed his drill bit. “I want to start you on Ritalin.”
“You’re a dentist, though.”
He stepped on a pedal and revved the drill. “I like to think of myself as more than that.”
The pill was the driest thing I’d ever swallowed and seemed to absorb all the moisture in my throat during its scratchy, slow descent. I drank from the glass of juice Audrey gave me and thought about Garrett Blount from fifth grade, who’d also been diagnosed as hyperactive. Garrett had pierced his own ears with a pencil, Krazy-glued his hands to walls and blackboards, and regularly wet himself in class. I still remembered the puddles under his desk, so hot they gave off visible wisps of steam.
“They’re wrong,” I said to Audrey. “I’m normal. I’m fine.”
She answered me with a story. When I was six yearsold, she said, I’d trimmed our living room carpet with pinking shears because I’d thought it was growing.
I didn’t remember this.
“Or think of when you were ten. The milk phase. You had to pour milk on everything you ate.”
I dropped my head. There was no denying the milk phase.
I was walking to school when I felt the Ritalin hit. The air seemed to thicken and mold itself against me. The sky expanded and revealed its curved shape as my peripheral vision spread and sharpened until I could almost see over my shoulders. Moments later, I noticed my stride had changed. My footsteps felt involuntary, guided, as if governed by magnets buried in the ground. To walk I just had to let myself be pulled.
My first class that morning was English. We were supposed to be reading
Moby Dick
. As Mrs. Rand chalked theme words on the blackboard—Whiteness, Sea vs. Land, Revenge & Pride—I opened my paperback copy for the first time.
“Who’d like to talk on Whiteness?” Mrs. Rand asked.
I opened my mouth and out flowed several ideas I wasn’t even conscious of having thought about. Whiteness stood for eternity, I said. It represented both innocence and extinction.
“I see you read the preface,” Mrs. Rand said.
This wasn’t true. I hadn’t read a line.
It happened again in biology. I pronounced “mitochondria”correctly, despite never having heard it spoken before.
After school, I swept into the house to share my news. I found Joel in front of the TV watching a tape of his serves at tennis camp. The counselors had told him he showed promise but that it was buried under all the weight.
“You’re out of breath,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve changed. I’m better. It works. It really works.”
“Why are your eyes like that?”
“Like what?”
“So huge.”
The conversation depressed me. I felt inside my pants and found the pill I was meant to have taken at noon.
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