“Maybe you shouldn’t be so obvious to other people. About how you’re so smart and all. People’ll think you’re stuck up.”
One of my closest friends in elementary school was a girl named Harper. She was in the same year as me, and the teachers frequently mixed us up because we both had straight brown hair and brown eyes. That, and we were almost always together.
Me and Harper in a school photo.
Anyway, Harper was smart. Like, really, really smart.
One thing that was so astonishing was how much she knew. Harper had extensive knowledge on just about every topic under the sun, and was never afraid to educate someone and everyone. I remember her getting into arguments with students, even older ones, on things she clearly knew more about than they did. She proved other kids wrong all of the time, and there were a couple times when I saw students stomping away from her in frustration to cry privately in a corner of the classroom.
The thing was, Harper knew she was smart. She knew she had been gifted with high intelligence that made classroom activities come a lot easier for her than for other students. What was wrong with flaunting it?
One afternoon, my 3rd grade teacher, Ms. Owens, had the class make cereal boxes. The classroom quickly came alive with the sounds of scribbling colored pencils and snipping scissors as the students got to work. At the end of the day, everyone put up their finished products on a table for the rest of the class to admire.
As usual, Harper’s cereal box was clearly one of the better ones. I even remarked on it to my mother when she picked me up from the elementary school to take me home.
“That’s great, honey,” my mother told me as we drove down our neighborhood’s streets. She nodded to the storm clouds brewing above. “On another note, look at that storm! I hope it doesn’t pass over us.”
But the storm did. All night, the wind howled and shook the trees of the city, and rain roared down, flooding the roads. In the morning, my mother had to brave large puddles to get me to school.
When I finally arrived, I was cutting across the rain-soaked fields when I noticed something odd sticking out of the grass several yards away from the doors to the school. It was a small, papery-looking thing.
I walked over and knelt down to inspect it. It looked like an art project, soaked through, deflated, and covered in dirt.
And then, I saw Harper’s name written carefully near the bottom.
For a moment, I just stared, not understanding. Why had Harper taken her art project and thrown it out in the rain?
Cradling Harper’s cereal box to my chest, I straightened and ran the rest of the way to my classroom. I quickly found my teacher, Ms. Owens, writing on the whiteboard.
“Ms. Owens!” I said, tugging on her skirt. “Look what I found!”
Ms. Owens looked down and stared at the art project. Her eyes widened.
“What happened to Harper’s art project?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I found it in the field.”
Ms. Owens paused, and then plucked the art project from my hands.
“Thank you for telling me,” she said. “You can go now.”
Confused, I went over to my desk and sat down. I looked up to see Harper walk through the front door and begin to put her backpack into her cubby, only to be stopped by Ms. Owens. I watched as Ms. Owens crouched down to hand Harper the remains of her art project. She seemed to ask her a question, but Harper’s face had been drained of blood, and she could only shake her head.
When Harper sat down next to me, I asked her what had happened.
“I don’t know,” Harper said. “I didn’t do this.”
I blinked. “Really? But who else—”
“I don’t know. Maybe Lillian, or Walter. Someone in our class.”
“No way. That’s such a mean thing to do!”
Harper let out a sigh, and looked away from me to scan the room. “It’s happened to me before, Virg. There are a lot of kids here that don’t like me.”
I paused, thinking.
“You know, maybe you shouldn’t be so obvious to other people. About how you’re so smart and all. People’ll think you’re stuck up.”
Harper simply sagged in her seat and didn’t answer.
The art project ended up not being salvageable, and was thrown into the trash. Years later, Harper moved to another state, and ended up doing very well in high school. She aced the PSAT and became a National Merit Scholar. She also got a full scholarship to her university. As far as I can tell, she is doing very well.
Harper was always extraordinary. And, like most extraordinary people, she began to face from a young age others who hated her for her talents. Because that’s what happens to extraordinary people.
When you’re extraordinary, there will always be others trying to stomp you out.
Read other answers by Virginia Kettles on Quora:
- When was the first time you felt discriminated against because you were female?
- Life: When did you first understand death? Why?
- What are the biggest regrets from your youth?
from Quora http://ift.tt/2jMGDwV
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