Beware of Brainiac

Notes from GenX: A Series

The thing about ideology is it’s an excuse. It’s a pre-digested explanation for people who can’t think of a practical reason, because they don’t go there. Ideology is for lazy people who act like they know, but really are just afraid to find out. Ideology leads lazy people exactly where they want to be, where everything makes sense and they are perfectly safe. In other words, ideology is for adults who want to be children because they lack courage.

I’m writing this for you, my young ones. It will come to you through the adults I regularly write for. A good number of us are GenX and perhaps we’ve been talking amongst ourselves for too long. Sooner or later we’re going to raise stakes and book up, and then this whole shindig will be your bag. But before we split, you got to know what’s up with that. Catch my drift?

You can start with my GenX Manifesto, but today’s lesson will include a little background on why. Oh yeah, and thanks for not doomscrolling. Sit down. This is going to take a minute.

Firstly, I don’t mean to talk down to anyone. I know people have been telling you to follow your passions, but the way I see it, and mind you I’m not talking for everybody in GenX, just me. The way I see it is that just means ‘indulge your feelings’. So the reason you’re listening means that didn’t work out for you and you’re trying to figure out why everything they told you was a lie. You were not a complete fool to listen. It’s not like you had power to do anything but rebel. But after a while you ran out of things to run away from and now you’re kind of stuck in the middle of nowhere and you’re mad at yourself for not being good enough. You feel like crying. I understand.

Make Yourself Useful
I’ll probably tell you this a bunch of times. I’m likely to write a whole chapter on it, but for right now, you need to wash your face and stop crying, because you are not useful to anybody, including yourself when you sit around pouting. You will be useful to yourself and others when you learn today’s lesson: Beware of Brainiac.

132 to 136
My name is Michael. I learned to read when I was three. My first book was Dr. Seuss of course. Green Eggs and Ham. I was faking it at first because I had a good memory. I memorized the first pages all the way up to ‘here or there’. Then was the magic moment. I made sense of the letters. Studying has always been hard for me because my parents did not like to repeat themselves. When they wanted something done, that was it. I had to remember what they said and get that thing done. I understood the whole story. I never had any choice. Whenever an adult spoke to me, I was to do what they said. Since I loved my parents and they loved me, and I loved my babysitter Mrs. Towns and my next door neighbor Mrs. Simmons and my other next door neighbor Mrs. Ivory and they were all nice people, that’s what I thought people were. So I did everything they said. That applied at elementary school as well.

So I loved all of my teachers. I had skipped a few grades and back in the 1960s the semester system was that you had B Kindergarten in the fall and A Kindergarten in the spring, then you would go to B1. I still recall Miss Hallenen (AK), Mrs. Bishop (music teacher) to Mrs. Pleasant (B1), to Mrs. Kissick (B2) to Mrs. Pollet (A2) until Mrs. Byers.

Mrs. Byers was my third grade teacher. She was way more strict but she was teaching interesting things. It ended up that I was in B3 in the spring and over summer vacation, I forgot how to multiply. In A3 we were supposed to know 2 digit multiplication and I completely forgot how that went. So Mrs. Byers got an attitude with everybody, like we were all stupid. All she really had to do was remind me.

For some reason, we didn’t have horticulture. There was a garden next to the third grade classroom but they let it go that fall. But what we did learn was that the sun didn’t come up at the same time every day. So our assignment was to get the newspaper and write down the times for sunrise and sunset. One day I didn’t have a pencil so I asked Mrs. Byers to borrow a pencil. She practically cursed me out. “What are your parents too poor to give you a pencil?” No, of course not, but pencils are at school. “You need to bring your own pencil to school, do you hear me? You’re not a baby!” Dang. I decided I did not like this sourpuss lady.

What happened next set off a chain of events that went over my head. Just like the day she wouldn’t give me a pencil, one day Mrs. Byers decided that despite my squirming, I could not go to the lavatory. It was already after lunch and she told me that I should have gone at lunchtime. The result was predictable. I peed on myself. I guess she sent me home. I can remember wrapping my sweater around my waist and walking home alone. When this happened a second time, I told my mother all the things I told you and she took it to the Principal of Virginia Road Elementary School, Mrs. Edna Cohen.

Mrs. Cohen was one of the reasons my parents moved to this neighborhood. She was a big shot and married a rich man. Her portrait was up on the wall at the Wilfandel Club up the hill on Adams Boulevard. She must have spoken to all of my other teachers who not only loved me but my little brother as well. I was a bit jealous that Mrs. Pollet took Bryan to where she lived in Fairfax to see Mary Poppins. He got to spend the night. Anyway, I was told I had to take something called the Stanford-Binet Test. I scored 132. Well, Mrs. Byers couldn’t believe it. So I was told that I would have to take it again. The second time I scored 136. So I learned that I was ‘gifted’.

The Teachers Strike
At Virginia Road, we had Speech Class for the kids who were retarded. And we had Religious Release for the one or two kids that wore funny hats and walked home early on Friday. We also had Gifted Children’s Class on Thursday with Miss Bosquito. Those were kinda fun. I was 8 years old in the fifth grade when the teachers all went on strike. So I found myself with kids that were two and three years older than me. Most kids stayed home but some teachers still came to work, so my parents told me that if school was open I must go. The good thing was that we took field trips instead of regular class.

One field trip I recall especially is that we went to Hancock Park, which some people thought was better than Beverly Hills. It’s where the Mayor lived. So while those teachers were still on strike somehow we got to go and look at their school. All I could remember was that they had a laboratory. And what was that standing in the corner? OMG a Vandegraff Generator. My substitute teacher did not know what it was and so I ran over to it to explain how it worked. She lost her shit. “Don’t touch that!” So I said, ok why don’t you do it? She refused and cut the tour short.

I was angry and sad at the same time. I quickly learned two lessons that day. I know stuff adults didn’t know, and our school was poor compared to Hancock Park. The lesson I learned later was that I was a ‘brainiac’. I didn’t realize that wasn’t a good thing.

I was used to knowing things other kids didn’t know. After all, I was reading second grade books while I was in Kindergarten. Mrs. Baker would bring me around to other classrooms and show me off. But knowing things adults didn’t know was something else entirely, as well, actually loving my teacher counted against me. By the time I was done with the 6th grade my folks had to make a decision about whether or not I should attend Mount Vernon Junior High. By this time, I was old enough to know about Crips, Brims and Blackstones. I didn’t know about Malcolm X, but I did know that Martin Luther King wouldn’t want me to be violent. I didn’t want to have to fight every day at school. I started to understand that I was different.

Brain Child
Mrs. Milliken was my fifth and sixth grade teacher. She was about four foot eight, wore glasses and had emphysema. She was the adopted daughter of the Halls who ran Hall’s Bookstore over on Santa Barbara Avenue, next to the Schwinn Bike store. She brought those plastic coated metal swiveling bookracks to Room 11 on the second floor northwest corner of the main building. After 4th grade with Mrs. White who later became Principal, I didn’t love teachers so much. But Mrs Milliken was unique. She went to USC and was a huge Trojan fan. She would also take bets against Notre Dame. If they won, you get a chocolate shake from the new McDonald’s on Crenshaw.

They canceled the music class and Mrs Bishop left the school. After the Sylmar Quake in 1971 they tore down half the buildings in the school. The gifted class was now over at Sixth Avenue School so I had to ride my bike over there. The only musical instruments we had left in the school were autoharps and a cello. It was the saddest cello ever, but I played it pizzicato like I was Mingus. I might have stuck with it, but I loved piano and over at USC where I took lessons from Mrs Kendricks, I could hear the kids downstairs in the piano shed playing scales. It was a horrible distraction.

‘Ma Mill’ would introduce me as her ‘brain child’. Since I didn’t go to Mount Vernon, I had to stay in the 6th grade for a second year. I was bored to death. So I learned how to curse like Mark Bavis and Mark Vincent. Me and my best friend Ebon conspired with Ma Mill to trap Mark Vincent who was cheating on math. We agreed to get the wrong answers on one particular row of problems to prove he was copying. We sat on either side and he got busted.

One day I learned that I had myopia. So after I got my first pair of glasses, I came to school with both glasses and a new blowout. After Mark Vincent, I had the biggest afro in class. That didn’t help much. I was still the brainiac and not to be trusted. I raced Ebon in SRA. That was the new color-coded reading system that they used. At the top of the pile was Olive. I was the first person to finish Olive.

Ebon and I finished the math book. We even found answers in the back of the book that were wrong. As far as all of the teachers at Virginia Road knew, there was no other mathematics but arithmetic. So instead of learning anything about probability or algebra we had 6 digit division.

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Outdoor Kid
I spent a lot of time talking about all that above because I want you to know that I genuinely have been the goody-two shoes, skinny kid with glasses, teacher’s pet. I know what it is like to be bullied by extraordinary bullies, ie gangbangers. Even though I didn’t go to Mt Vernon, I did go to Holy Name of Jesus School. So I was a mark in my uniform, riding the Number 9 bus back in the days before backpacks.

But here’s the other unusual thing about me. I wasn’t afraid to fight. I was the oldest of four boys. I can’t find a good picture of the four of us spread in age as we were over eight years. I don’t know to right now, and don’t really want to go on about what kind of courage it gives you to be four boys strong whether or not you grow up in a roughneck neighborhood or merely adjacent. I grew up with the tension of actually wanting to be peaceable and actually have my way. I was rewarded for outsmarting, so I was a smartass. It was not out of insecurity so much as my sense of contempt for those who didn’t even bother to be kind or respectful. Yet it never occurred to me that I should buff myself up and teach them a lesson. I forgave ignorance and I was wary of arrogance.

In my mind the world was huge and the squabblers simply wanted to rule over their tiny fiefdoms. Whether they were suburban dorks or ghetto hardheads. I had a category of condescension for them all. I was moral. I made no ethical errors. I was civilized. I was invited to the dances. I was young, gifted and black, I was the future. I was entitled to the best the world had to offer; I just had to get these other cretins out of my way. Inside of my head was to circus where I occupied the center ring. I did the intellectual acrobatics of the Mensa tests. Of the LA Times Tangle Towns puzzles. Of grasping the Concepts. Of satisfying my own curiosity amongst the Me Generation, where just about everything was possible and all I had to do was shine. And right about 1977 when all the cool graphics looked like a combination of the animation of the Yellow Submarine film, Leroy Neiman paintings of Ali and 7Up Uncola commercials, there I was Stayin’ Alive with my mind in a galaxy far far away. I was above and beyond. I could hike in the wondrous ecology and get away from the city and the smog and the telephone poles and the pimps in their Cadillacs and the inevitable corruption of American life.

Tomorrowland
I remember the punk attitude in the 80s. Live for today, for tomorrow we die. I couldn’t abide that. I worked four years and reality beat the prep school entitlement out of me. The only thing I had was the future. One of these days, just you wait. Live for tomorrow for today we are dead. I was going to brain my way forward. I started reading Megatrends. I started listening to Wynton Marsalis. I had a new attitude of naked ambition, of making America work for me. There was no master plan, no winning aesthetic, there was only pure struggle. I held out hope for that place I called The Noble Arena, but in the end I figured out I was at the end of the runway. No JATO for you, son. You don’t get a birds-eye view of America. You find your way through the dark forest. Everything sucks, but ohhhh someday…

Then one day I found myself looking at an American Express billboard. The handsome couple were on their way to Jamaica for a price I could afford. The man wore clothes of the sort I wore. It dawned on me that I was the target audience. I sat in my cube in the business park near the beach in Corporate America with my high top fade and Nordstrom tie. Just like Blair Underwood in LA Law. Proper.

This was a new world. New to me, seeming like it was recognizing my style and I suddenly felt like an American. It wasn’t easy getting there, but it was easy being there. And yet I felt like I wasn’t finished climbing. As I achieved a little bit more, I started to realize the difference between myself and people who did what was required and nothing more. It became a great deal more clear when left Los Angeles and moved to New York. This is where I have to cut things off, and split this up into more parts.

Beware of Brainiac
What I’m saying, or trying to convey as the point of this recollection is twofold. I may be horribly self-deluded, but I think I was in the mainstream of a world of achievers and strivers. I have only the smallest complaints about growing up where and how I did. I’ve always been optimistically and liberally middle-class. And yet I suffered the same condescending blindness that one gets when attaching oneself to an upwardly mobile clique. Yes I have met people who have heard all of the songs and read all of the books that I thought was ‘my culture’, and it took me a long time to recognize the difference between achievement, excellence and punching down. We think we get it. We have that survivor’s bias. We can honestly say “It worked for me.” whether or not our path was common. We make our number, we reach that goal and that’s enough proof. Yet all of us, in some way, understand, especially when we demonstrate some kind of excess capacity, know that we could do better but we’re not asked to. We’re not paid to do better. We just don’t want to fall off.

I’m a writer because I’m underemployed. I stopped trying to be the best under all circumstances. I keep something in reserve so that I can be honest here. I am underinvested in my middle class life. I want to be as true as possible at as many times as possible. But I’ve got to bob and weave and rope-a-dope. The ring is unpredictable and I’ve got to save my breath for 15 rounds.

Any day you could break your leg, and you will be totally helpless to fix yourself. All of the soft skills could be rendered useless in a regime change. Any day you could face a knife in a dark corner, and you will be totally helpless to defend yourself. All of your treadmill hours could be rendered useless.

We have an enormously complex society, and we never quite know where we stand. All we know are the struggles we face. All we know are the treasures we hoard. All we know are the advantages we take. All we know are the demons that haunt our dreams. We can never know where we stand, and it doesn’t take much to destabilize our life. This is our peasant life. And how much power do we ultimately have, merely our own will.

Beware of Brainiac. She got the As. He got the attaboys. They are sponsored, now. In the moment. Celebrate them, but don’t give your life over to them. They don’t deserve you. That is because so few of us are called to civilizational competence. It is only when we earn and sustain that level of responsibility that we put our minds and character to the test. Everything else is us dogs jumping for the snacks held above our heads.

So my aim is to be Stoic and mind what I’ve been paying attention to. How many people’s business have I stuck my nose into? Somehow I think I’ve fallen short because I think I’m a brainiac. In our populist society, the influencers say “This is my opinion, tell me what you think in the comments. Remember to like and subscribe.” And we’re way over our skis.

How Do You Know You’re a Brainiac
My new category. Shit you have no business having an opinion about. You are commoditizing your brain.

• The full 50 minutes of Trump & Zelensky

• The insurance & zoning situations of Palisades and Altadena

• The Gulf of America

• The Gaza Ceasefire

• Statehood for Canadian Provinces

• AGI futures

• Quantum computing futures

• Antioxidants

Quit your addiction to ‘all things considered’. Mind your business.