Wednesday, September 30, 2009

"The Ritalin"


When I was still a happy little tadpole making my way through the North Carolina public school system, my teachers had me pegged behavior-wise as the perfect candidate for "pharmaceutical intervention". "Prone to excessive talking" they would write in the comments section of the bright pink report card. "Frequent and unnecessary outbursts." "Distracts other children from their classwork."

I can still remember the meeting between my mother and my third grade teacher: a morbidly obese black woman named Mrs. Patricia Dalton.

"He's a bright child...excels at his schoolwork and such, but we just can't keep him under control! He doesn't seem like he wants to follow directions", Mrs. Dalton says to my mother.

I was too young to have any effective counter-arguments at my disposal, but I still realized just how ridiculous my teacher's claims sounded. Who "wanted" to follow directions in the first place? If it were up to me I would have gladly spent my days outdoors, killing small animals with rocks and starting forest fires.

Besides, it was nothing my mother hadn't heard a thousand times before. I was an anomaly - a kid that just wouldn't learn to "do right" no matter how many heavy-duty paddles or freshly cut switches collided with my bare ass. In my own mind, I was tainted with a stigma worse than that of any child-molester or hunchback peeping-Tom.

"Well now..." my mother says in that soft country brogue - the kind you expect to offer you sweet tea and hushpuppies for just stopping by - "we correct this poor child day-in and day-out. He does good with his studies, but we just can't seem to get through to him about anything else. I ain't never seen the beat in my life !!!" My mother looks at me like a conscientious nurse might look at a toddler with an inoperable, cancerous tumor. I was pitiful...hopeless...defective. Better to die an early death than to torment my longsuffering teachers for nine more years of public school education.

I always wondered what my mother meant when she said, "I ain't never seen the beat...". What exactly was this mysterious "beat", and how had it eluded her for so long? Maybe she was saying "beet"...but how could my bad behavior remind her of the main ingredient in borscht? Maybe it was some quaint colloquialism she picked up in the Appalachians? Perhaps she'd even made it up herself.

"Now, Mrs. F_____, have you ever considered Ritalin as an option?"

What Mrs. Dalton didn't know is that my mother threatened me with the prospect of going on "the Ritalin" at least once a week, usually after reciting the possible side-effects straight out of a pharmacology guide: hair-loss, discharge from the nipples, insomnia, seizures. "Is that what you want, Bruce..to have PUS run out of your nipples?" she'd ask, as if I might possibly say "yes" to pseudo-lactation. "Why, did you say PUS, mother-darling? That sounds positively DELIGHTFUL!!"

Her tactics were cruel and effective. Within minutes, I'd be in tears, begging her to PLEASE not call the doctor and have me put on a regimen of toxic pills.

In reality, she would have never went through with it. The concept of drugging a child to get them to behave offended her well-bred mountain sensibilities like the thought of garroting her way through a basket of kittens. To Emily F______, once someone gave you "dope" the first time, you were hooked for life, and no-one was going to turn her child into a drug-addict!

"Why, Mrs. Dalton, me and my husband do our best to correct the boy. We give him whuppins and take away his toys, but we don't believe in giving drugs to children. There's better ways to correct them..."spare the rod and spoil the child", as they say in the Scriptures."

My mother stuck to her word. A few years later, when my bad behavior REALLY started, she refused the advice of legions of therapists, social-workers, and counselors. When the police where dragging me out the front door while I screamed expletives at my mother, she refused the antidepressents. Even when she had me committed to Dorothea Dix for six months after I fucked up really bad, she still decided to forgo the Zoloft and Prozac.

They don't make em like that anymore.

4 comments:

FewThereBeThatFindIt said...

Real good, real good.

Anonymous said...

I was fortunate to have never been threatened with meds though my parents would have refused, I'm sure. It would have cost money, right?

Though I got my share of "he's distracted" and such. Which how can you not be distracted in a classroom at that age? If there is an unblinded window and you look out and imagine, "I could be out there doing something else." Anything else. Anything but be in there walking single file and forced to write Valentines for everyone in the class and play nice.

Not that I'm ripping on education. But telling a 7 year old boy he needs to be drugged for, ahem, acting like a 7 year old boy seems a bit strong, no?

What is that mess teaching?

Silas said...

What does an elementary school teacher have to do nowadays: show kids how to string macaroni necklaces and operate their Ipods? No wonder this whole shame diagnosis of ADD came about -- kid's brain just don't know how to handle the intellectual rigor of adding two plus two.

Man, I agree with you 100%. You know, I never understood why adults were punished by incarceration for things that society loves to push on the youngsters. If I buy Ritalin on the street, I could end up on probation or worse, while the poor kids don't even have a choice in the matter. Take your pills, finish your Captain Crunch, and don't let those damn teachers call me at work. That's the modern "enlightened" parent.

Anonymous said...

I'm betting there are some kids who can benefit from medication, but this many? http://www.scpronet.com/point/9702/p07.html

Education is a great thing. We learn about history and math and science and our political system and all that stuff. We even get to learn some life lessons about "right" and "wrong" sometimes. What is the life lesson in drugging so many kids?

Man, being a kid is tough enough. All that energy and imagination. Remember how difficult it was to sit in one place and listen for just 15 minutes? And that's natural stuff.

Though that thing about sitting and listening for 15 minutes happened today and it was nearly impossible to perform.