Dumb Is As Dumb Does - Despite Inclusivity The Potholed Road Of A Clueless Person

Harper Fields was, in the words of his parents and teachers, 'a slow learner', diagnosed with ADHD and other learning disabilities, but despite all the professional nomenclature he was simply as dumb as a stone, unable to tell this from that, befuddled by simple addition, and bamboozled by the most basic sentences in his first grade reader. 

His parents had tried everything to boost the boy's potential, to at least raise him a few notches above the bottom of the barrel, give him a fighting chance in a desperately competitive world, but no dice.  The boy stumbled along, bumping into things, asking directions to nowhere, and left wondering at life's simplest mysteries. 

Now, Mr. and Mrs. Fields were not dumb by any means. While not the sharpest knives in the drawer, they both had creditable professions.  She was an accountant, and he was a manager at one of Washington's largest banks, both occupations which required more than a modicum of ability and intellectual resources. 

'So where did he come from?', Mr. Fields rhetorically asked his wife, glancing at the photo of old Gertrude Bingham her great grandmother who was apparently in the lexicon of the day, 'a few bricks shy of a load'.  Looking dumbly at the camera with a stupid smile fixed on her face, it must be the old lady responsible for Harper's unfortunate mess.  Genes have a way of finding a home, Fields said, and God only knows where that will end up. 

 

Mrs. Fields objected.  She had never much liked her mother-in-law, and whenever the old bat started in on her storied family history, Mrs. Fields retched.  The Fields family, a classic case of interbreeding and incestuous intents to preserve its legacy, had nothing to brag about, and any defective genes must have come from that side of the family. 

At the same time neither one of the Fields was willing to give in to Nature.  Nurture had a role to play in all behavioral outcomes, and they might still be able to gin up some mental energy in their son.  Before they saw how hopeless this was, they bought all kinds of interactive toys, the kind which engages the child's logic.  Nothing complex, but challenging; but day after day as they spread the component parts in front of the boy and watched him suck them and roll them like dice instead of figuring out where they belonged, they grew more discouraged. 

They tried everything, and since was still in the days of 'multiple intelligences', they assumed that although he might not be cognitively apt, he could still color between the lines, whistle a tune, or jump high hurdles.   His teachers quickly but apologetically disabused the Fields of that notion.  The boy was not good at anything they said and referred them to the school clinician trained to deal with slow learners and refer them to appropriate medical attention. 

Before long little Harper Fields was so doped up with the latest state-of-the-art drugs that he was barely recognizable.  One day he was a whirling dervish of inchoate energy, hopping around the house, climbing the walls, and kicking things; the next he was catatonic, sitting with a blank stare out into space.  When changing prescriptions failed after many attempts, all drugs were discontinued, and Harper was allowed to return to his original, unfortunately blank slate. 

He wasn't retarded, so there was no place for him in special institutions, no special help offered by the state; and his parents were left to deal with him as they saw fit, but since educational toys, counselling, and raft of psychoactive drugs had failed completely, they were left with few options. 

The elementary school kept bumping him along, but by the time he was in sixth grade and barely able to do third grade work, they were perplexed.  Middle school looming on the horizon would be a disaster.  There in a hormone-fueled environment, he would make no headway and would, despite progressive adjustments to ensure inclusivity and eliminate bullying, adolescents always seemed to find a way to be mean.  The only up side to all this was that Harper was too stupid to realize anything.  The taunting boys and girls would still be his friends. 

So armed with that rather uncharitable notion, the Fields sent him to Lafayette Junior High School, one of the District of Columbia's better places, but given the pitiful rating of the city's school system, that wasn't saying much. 

'Perhaps the diversity there will be a good thing', said Mr. Fields, obliquely referring to the black students who, thanks to the same progressive reformers, came from the slums of Anacostia and points east.  These children might not be genetically mis-wired like Harper, but every educational indicator of intelligent performance barely registered.  Harper would at least be in a stable of slow learners. 

These black kids, however, brought up in a macho culture where consideration and compassion were unknown quantities, were the meanest, cruelest of Harper's antagonists; so much so that neither teachers nor administrators knew what to do with these unsocialized, intellectually devoid students. 

Even poor, clueless Harper eventually got the picture and told his parents that he didn't want to go to school any more, so the Fields opted for St. Mary of the Valley, a parochial school not far from their home.  There, Father Brophy told them, their boy in the spirit of Jesus Christ would be treated with respect and love. 

  

Not so, of course, for all adolescents are the same, and there is no stopping the hormones coursing through their bloodstreams or their viciously competitive nature; and Catholic or not, Harper's classmates were as vile to him as their counterparts downtown. 

Somehow the boy managed to stumble his way up and out of St. Mary's.  His classmates simply got tired of bullying him and finally left him alone.  He managed to graduate high school with an equivalency diploma, and headed for MK, Montgomery College, so called because the students couldn't spell 'college' but the perfect place for Harper including as it did old-fashioned courses in shop and carpentry.  Thank God the boy had at least some aptitude at planing a board and affixing drywall, so could find an apprenticeship somewhere. 

'See, there's a place for everyone', said Mr. Fields who had long since dropped the cover he had invented for his son and accepted the fact that he would go no further in life than hammering nails.  There were enough 'mentally challenged' girls out there, so he would more than likely marry one; but given the vagaries of genetics, their children might turn out to be Einsteins.  

'Wouldn't that be a hoot?', laughed his father, finally having an ironic sense of humor about the Creator's deck of cards.