My Bad Hand: Being a Brain

Natural Ability Isn't Always Good

I was the kid for whom school came easy. Everything that I learned took very little if any effort, and when my natural talent for absorbing and applying information became apparent there were of course all the usual tests and it resulted in those terms being thrown about. Gifted. Genius. Brilliant. Words that sound like huge compliments, but would plague me for much of my life. When I learned something quickly, like math concepts or principles of science I was praised instantly for being "so very smart". 

What bullshit. My parents and teachers no doubt meant well, but what they didn't know was that they were teaching me to equate results with a state of being I had no control over. I was good at school, not because I worked hard or devoted myself to it, but because that shit came easy for me. I learned early that if something isn't easy the first time, there's not going to be a lot of excitement around attempting it. My first and only attempt at team sports involved a lot of being told that sports just weren't for me because they weren't instantly easy for me. For every failure there, I was encouraged to just keep doing what I was good at. Trying anything new was out of the question. My fate was decided, and I was going to be a brain. 

Always Learning

Learning Not To Try

Expressing interest in anything outside academics is something that I learned not to do. Through a combination of that and being every bit the target of bullies that a four-eyed geek who can't even get a base hit at kick ball is, I learned to stop trying. And so it went throughout my childhood. If it wasn't about getting an academic scholarship, don't bother. Forget art classes, music, sports of any kind. Just stick with the math and science.And don't fuck it up. Because if you fail, all it means is you're not actually smart. That brought its own problems. Kids who get told that their academic success is due to being smart are way more reluctant to try doing something new unless they're already certain they can succeed at it. I wasn't any different. I sure as shit wasn't going to do something that might disprove everyone's insistence that I was a genius. 

Creating Bravery From Fear

I still battle that demon every day, but at least now I know that I have a demon to battle. It took me a very long time to recognize that fucker as an entity of its own. And it rides my ass like a conjoined twin I can't separate. There came a point late in the middle of winter of 2016 that some people I knew from work who were aware of my gym going had been telling me that it's fun to run. I had never had fun running in my entire life. Running was one of those things I wasn't good at, and therefore didn't try to do. I'd failed the mile run every year in high school PE, and I sure as fuck did not want to start running as a 37 year-old fatass. I was going to be terrible, so I wasn't going to try. There's the demon. Screaming in my ear. You're not good at running. You should stick to what you are good at. Be a brain. Write more code. That son of a bitch was still there. 

But so was something else. I had, months before, created a voice in me that would yell back at the demon. And so I relented, with my coworkers promising me that if I ran just one 5K and still hated running, they would never bother me again. I downloaded a Couch to 5K app, and I signed up for a 5K. The biggest 5K in Pittsburgh, which is always run the day before the Pittsburgh Marathon. I didn't tell a soul. I was too afraid I would fail. I still weighed over 200 pounds and I had never run a mile in my life, let alone 3.1 miles. But I started running anyway. I had no proper running shoes and at first I struggled to run for 1 minute at a time. I was convinced that I would fail, but at least I would fail silently and no one who knew me would ever know about it. 

On April 30th, 2016 it was race day. I pinned my bib onto clothes I have come to learn are a terrible choice for sweating into - a 100% cotton shirt, and some loose fitting sweat pants. My shoes had holes in the toes. I weighed in at 201 pounds, but I hauled my ass out there and ran. I was nearly last, and nervous the entire time about the sweep bus picking me up for being too slow; I'd heard all the horror stories about that humiliating possibility. But the demon didn't win that day. I didn't fail. I finished a 5K. It was the first time I had tried something I wasn't automatically good at, risked failure, and carried on anyway despite my fears. Bravery is not being unafraid. Anyone can do something they're not afraid of, that shit's easy. Bravery is doing something that scares you. So of course at the finish line, when another runner asked me "What now?" I replied "I'm going to run a half marathon!"

You never forget your first time

Of course the first stop from there was to get properly fitted for some running shoes and retire my old friends, but the following year I was back. And I ran that half marathon.