1:47am May 10, 2015

Nonphenomenal Lineage

Hello, good morning, sir
Your results are back
Now it’s time to pack
Your things and go
Seems you’ve came up rather short
Of the average sort
Now I must inform
You’ve no reason left to remain here
Now surely you understand
Only gifted hands
Will receive the chance
To touch down on fortune
Now we’ll gather up your things
Lead you to the gate
And you will go away
And never attempt to return here
Non-phenomenal lineage
Non-phenomenal lineage
Non-phenomenal lin–
This song has so many meanings to me.
Getting an IQ test at age 22, as part of an SSI evaluation. Having been considered a gifted kid, and given the astonishment of the tester that my results showed I was “much smarter than I looked”, I assumed that my test score was at least, you know, 125. Years later, I received my SSI records in the mail in order to show them to an agency.
My score: 85. Right on the edge of “borderline intellectual functioning”. In a different day and age, would’ve been considered “retarded” (that was the word back then). By some autism-related definitions, places me at “low functioning” or “mid functioning”. (The cutoff for low functioning, when based on IQ, can vary anywhere from 60 to 90 from what I’ve seen in the research.)
People trying to tell me that’s not really my IQ. Then what is? An IQ is a test score. That was my test score. There’s no test score hidden inside my brain, waiting to be let out. Test scores are how you score on a test, nothing more, nothing less. And that’s all an IQ is.
Some people think my real IQ ought to be much higher, others think it ought to be much lower, and I find both equally insulting. It’s like they have to make excuses in their heads for why my IQ is so low, or so high, depending on their perspectives.
I think of IQ testing every time I hear this song.
I think of being put into segregated educational settings. I think of being segregated even within those settings. The school in the barn at the treatment center. I was too drugged to stay awake. They were worried the other kids would think I was getting away with something, so they put me in a big chair, back to back with the other students so we couldn’t see each other. Then in order to make it seem like they were teaching me something, they put a walkman on and earphones, and put a copy of the audiobook of “The Diary of Anne Frank” in my ears. It didn’t keep me awake no matter how loud they put it, but it may have given me ear damage after awhile.
“You’ve no reason left to remain here.” That line always got to me. You don’t belong in the outside world anymore, you belong in special institutions built just for people like you, special schools, special programs, special this special that.
This song reminds me of everything about being exgifted.
I sang it to a poor, working-class nonautistic woman who came to Autreat and found herself surrounded by academic auties with advanced degrees in all these subjects, found herself feeling inferior. She got blank looks or flat denial when she snarkily referred to herself as a low-functioning NT.
For every person who has ever disclosed a low IQ score and had other people try to explain away how “smart” people like them couldn’t really have a low IQ score. For every person who has ever disclosed a high IQ score and had other people try to explain away how “retarded” people like them couldn’t really have a high IQ score. For every person who has gained 80 points, lost 80 points, or otherwise changed IQ in drastic ways, and had people not believe them because of it. It’s just an effing number on an effing piece of paper, folks.
For everyone who can’t pursue their dreams because they have the wrong scores, come from the wrong class, ethnic, sexual, gender, or racial background.
My own family has spectacularly nonphenomenal lineage, until a few people in recent generations we were always poor or working-class or both, many of us still are, and we could’ve been one of those eugenics family studies if anyone had got hold of us at the wrong time. Lots of us have been called “slow” and “tetched” and “crazy”. I’ve been told with my family history I should never have children because they might turn out like me or my other relatives.
And being told that someone like me should never set foot on a university campus again. Having other autistics try the same university only to hear, “We tried someone like you once, it didn’t work out.” The guilt. I wished at the time I could go back to a group home or larger institution, where I “belonged”.
Must I go on about why this song brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it, or every time it goes through my mental jukebox? And I absolutely use this one as musical echolalia all the time. It fits my life too well. Shut out of so many things.