I looked him straight in the eye. "Low genius."
"How do you know that?", he asked quietly. This was all supposed to be hush-hush, top secret. Children weren't supposed to know the results of IQ tests; it would warp them or something.
"Dad, you'd be amazed what you can find out in the library.", was my only answer. Yes, the library and the Internet (when that was invented) and a couple of later standardized tests. Most tests pegged me at about 140, just at the bottom end of the genius rating. It didn't warp me all that much knowing about it. Hamilton tested out even higher - I mean, have you ever actually met somebody who scored a perfect 1600 on their SAT? I lived with the little bastard! - but he was living proof that IQ doesn't make you smart.
The final discussion was my insulting Mr. Butterfield. Despite the fact I had apologized, I was chewed out for pushing his buttons, and television was denied for the rest of the week. Well, it beat a beating, and I deserved it. Oh well.
Chapter 6: Financial Planning
Thursday, December 19, 1968
Surprisingly, not much was said about my testing out of Algebra 1. Those who noticed me skipping out on the classes basically assumed I was dropping out of the class, not burning ahead. It would probably be more noticeable in January, when I began sitting in on some of the Algebra 2 classes. Mrs. Bakkley's plan was for me to skip out for about a month, studying on my own to catch up, and then to audit the class towards the end of the spring semester.
Otherwise things went along quietly. Eighth grade English and Social Studies were abysmally boring, as always. They had been before. We didn't move ahead of the norms until we got to high school in those subjects. General Science was much like before, and Mr. Rodriguez was just as interesting. I still found chemistry to be interesting - after all, I had made it a career once before - but now had no burning desire to do so again.
Gym proved curious. Before, I had suffered from the same body anxiety and nervousness as any other little boy. I often tried to skip out on showers after gym, and my locker smelled unbearably atrocious. Now, I just didn't care if anybody saw my scrawny little ass, and if anybody commented on the size of my pecker, I'd just ask them why they were looking. I also cleaned my shit out of the locker and took it home to be washed. The EPA would have approved, if there was an EPA at the time; it wouldn't be invented until after Nixon took office.
My physical training program had begun paying some marginal dividends. I could run almost three miles now, and if I wasn't the world's fastest runner, I could do so without embarrassing myself or tossing my cookies all over the place. I decided it was time to learn self-defense.
Monday, at dinner, after dessert, I brought it up. Suzie had already been excused along with Hamilton, but I stayed at the table. "I want to learn self-defense." I announced.
Mom looked startled at that, and Dad said, "I thought your new plan was to run away?"
"Well, what if they catch me?", I replied, earning a snort from him and a frown from my mother.
"Did you have something specific in mind?", he asked.
I nodded. "I don't know if you remember him or not, but Lance Miyagi was at Hampton with me, and his father teaches karate or something up on York Road in Timonium. I figured I could see about that."
Hamilton had been spying on us from the kitchen. Laughing, he came through the doorway. "You're going to learn karate?" He kept laughing and started waving his arms around in giant fake karate chops.
"I may use it on him.", I muttered.
"Hey Suzie, Carl wants to learn karate!" Suzie came running up the stairs and the pair of them jumped ludicrously around the living room chopping and kicking at each other. Mom and Dad yelled at them to knock it off, which only ended when my idiot brother actually connected and hit her arm. Suzie started crying and Hamilton got smacked by my father and both got sent to their rooms.
"Well, that doesn't seem like a very good idea, now, does it?", asked my mother in her most disapproving voice.
"Mom, it's not my fault he's a jerk. Why did you even have him? I mean, you got it right the first time!"
Dad laughed at this and Mom pursed her lips. This was a recurrent joke around the house. I would say that they got it right the first time and how can you improve on perfection. Suzie would say it took them three tries to get it right, and they were able to stop after she came along. Only Hamilton couldn't say anything, stuck in the middle like he was.
"I don't like the idea of you fighting. It's not right."
"Mom, it's not fighting, it's learning how not to fight." that made no sense, but Mom wasn't big on logic to begin with. Reasonably smart lady, but couldn't pass a logic course if her life depended on it.
Dad agreed to take me up to the Miyagi school after the holidays, at least to look around. Unsaid but implied was that I was going to have to figure out how to pay for any lessons. He certainly wasn't going to cough up any cash. This evening, however, the answer to that problem had come through. Dad came home early, and Mr. Steiner followed him. Ham and Suzie were sent to their rooms, and my parents and I sat down in the living room with him. It was a very brief meeting.
The lawsuits we had brought against the other students on the bus had been settled, much like I had predicted, but even faster than I thought. He had been barraging them and their lawyer with letters, but that was about it. His only real time and trouble was the day he filed the lawsuit and had them all served with papers. He opened his briefcase and brought out a pile of papers that he had my parents and me sign, and then handed me a check for $20,000.
This was some serious coin for the day. Dad never said anything to me, but it could well have been more than his annual paycheck, and he was a fairly senior engineer at the company. It could certainly have paid for four years at most colleges for me, and that was the plan immediately announced. Mom decided to put it in their savings account.
"I think I'd rather put it in my savings account.", I announced.
"Don't be silly. We certainly aren't going to let you have it. It's for the future.", she replied.
Steiner raised an eyebrow at that, but I just calmly answered, "According to the check, it's my name on there and not yours. I have no problem with putting it in a savings account to start with, but it will be in my name."
"Well, I never!" She looked at my father irately. "Are you going to just sit there? He can't keep this money, he'll just spend it!"
Dad didn't agree with her automatically. Instead he looked at me and asked, "What did you have in mind?" This caused my mother to issue an outraged cry.
I ignored her and answered, "Well, a savings account would be adequate to start with, but I know I can get a much better rate of return at a brokerage. The equity markets in general have been averaging somewhere around nine to ten percent for most of the last decade, which is quite a bit higher than a savings account. If I am saving this money for the future, I should make it work for me."
Mom continued to fulminate as Dad and Mr. Steiner sat back and appraised me. Finally Dad said, "Shirley, settle down. He's making sense."