Butterfly in the Typewriter Read Online Free PDF Page A

anything.” The curriculum was too simplistic for him. So his mother made an appointment with the school psychologist to have him tested.
    In preparation for the test, Kenny’s father spent hours every day working with him on math. Finally, the day of the test came. He went into a closed room with a psychologist, while Thelma waited outside. She had presumed his strength would be in language arts, but to her surprise he showed exceptional strength in math. And he had scored 133 on the IQ test, with a 160 being the category of genius. But the psychologist, Thelma claimed, said his score “would have been higher” except he became bored with the test and he stopped talking. “I’ll tell you why he stopped talking to you,” Thelma replied. “He was observing you.” His mother often explained how his “great asset” was “studying people and observing everything keenly.” The young boy found people far
more intriguing than any tests of the intellect. The psychologist recognized him as an unusually bright and perceptive child, although he was not classified as a genius. However, the request for advancement was approved. And at the age of five, when most children are still in kindergarten learning to read and count, Toole entered the second grade.
    The accomplishment of skipping two grades so early in his schooling served as proof to Thelma that she had a genius for a son. She certainly deserves credit for nurturing his imagination and intellect. But it seems her son had little choice in being so successful. From the moment he was born, his mother deemed he was destined for greatness. He was “a rarity in the category of newborn,” she explained, “because there was an aura of distinction.” The nurses at the hospital had never seen a baby with such lively facial expressions, she reported. And Thelma was convinced her child was a natural born leader of sorts: when he cried in the nursery, “everyone cried.” In her remembrances of him as a child, his mother always emphasized his maturity. In a keepsake baby book, Thelma chronicled his early years but races past his infancy, seemingly eager to showcase the development of his mind, his awareness, and his wit. He had “the charm of a six-month-old baby” from the day he was born. It seemed to her he was “ready to get going and achieve” from his first moments of life. And when she told him that he was going to go to school at the age of three, the same age at which she started school, he rebelled. “He had the mentality of a six-year-old,” she explained. From his intellect to his looks, his mother was convinced he was a prodigy. She even thought he shared a “striking resemblance” to the son of World War II hero General Douglas MacArthur. And, of course, at the heart of Kenny’s talents was a devotion to his mother. “I want to please you, Mother,” he said to her, frustrated, one day, “but I don’t know how.”
    A nurturing guidance eventually turned to eager encouragement that chased prestige and success. Thelma celebrated how he was “always two years younger than his classmates,” and yet they still looked up to him. She emphasized how he could stand in judgment of them. “Those children thought I was Shakespeare,” he bragged to her after a class presentation. He often referred to his classmates as “those children” when speaking to his mother. In that phrase she heard his earned sense of superiority. But certainly such posturing would have social consequences
as well, even among children. If the young Kenny distinguished himself from his classmates with disdain, one wonders how he would cultivate relationships.
    Yet, classmates of Toole do not recall him having a superiority complex. They do remember, however, the immediate attention he gained as a student. Jane Stickney Gwyn, one of Toole’s former classmates, recalls