So. Why was I burning through library cards checking out books on psychic phenomena? Why was I there almost every night and then on the internet for hours after that?
Well, it had to do with the bug fucking and the watches. As a child, tiny pieces of information would crystalize in my head before there was any way for me to have learned them. Déjà vu was one possibility, but I’ve had déjà vu and it isn’t quite the right fit for my experience. You never actually learn anything from déjà vu. It’s just the sense of vague recollection that fades almost as quickly as it comes. My experience was different. Repetitive. Verifiable. I knew things I had no business knowing. Male soapberry bugs, Jadera haematoloma, are absolute sex hounds, screwing for up to eleven days in one go just to ensure that other males don’t inseminate the same female. What in the National goddamned Geographic fuck, right? No one should just know that.
My parents recognized early on that there was something weird happening. The second I could make words I began referencing obscure facts, the truth of which could be verified with a little research, but for which my knowledge had no basis. At first, they’d just assumed I was a focused listener. Maybe I’d heard someone drop an interesting nugget in line at the grocery store. Kids repeated stuff all the time. But as I crossed out of toddlerhood, the pattern settled in. Instead of the occasional, passing fact bomb, I might give a play-byplay of the mating habits of Brazilian bark lice, leaving out no detail. In between bites of mac n’ cheese I’d let slip that the female actually has a dick that she uses to scoop sperm from the male bark lice’s vagina. I remember my parents being in such awe of science that they’d not cared that I was blabbing about insect uglies at the dinner table.
So off I went to the pediatrician for the basic is-this-kid-okay11 checkup, and on from there to the child psychologist. My parents explained to her that I was some sort of genius, but a few simple tests quickly dispelled that hypothesis. Unperturbed, they insisted on a full battery of IQ tests, which were conclusive: I was solidly average, entirely unremarkable. I was simply regurgitating information and terminology of unknown provenance. They went for a second opinion. My scores went down. I was a parrot, not a prodigy. Still, they wanted answers. So did I.
A barnacle of kale and chicken plunked the laptop’s touchpad. I set the spatula down next to it and eased it back onboard with my pinky, then hoovered it up.
Together my parents explored every contrived and far-flung theory to explain my curious condition, going so far as to accuse me of reading books in secret. Sneaking off to read? I mean, do people do that? Certainly not me; I had video games to play and snacks to eat (which I then later cancelled out with different snacks).