“Chew.” The man was trying to be patient. He could get recalcitrant students to keep up in his economics class, but was failing at this seemingly simple task. The child’s jaw moved twice. Then stopped. The man took a breath. “Terri? Chew.”
The rest of the family had finished dinner a quarter hour earlier. And yet, the man still sat at the table, watching his young daughter in the chair beside him in this nightly ritual: getting me to eat.
I wasn’t a picky eater. Nor was I simply stubborn – although that is a trait I have been accused of from time to time. The truth is, I’d forget. Yes, forget. Despite the delicious food in my mouth, my mind would leave the chair I was in, the dining room, the house, the world, and be whisked away by random thoughts that consumed me beyond me consuming my dinner. I couldn’t explain, then or now, what the ideas where or why they were so captivating. They just were.
A number of articles have been circulating over the past few months equating creativity as something akin to schizophrenia – more conscious information in the brain than other people have. The difference between the schizophrenic and the creative is the ability to function despite of it. But sometimes, it’s a fine line.
I look back on my life and that makes sense. Between forgetting to chew and the worm family that I played with outside the back door and the box of live snakes and the Barbie dolls I would place in my toy oven to play mad-scientist, I was different from other kids. I should have known I was writer. Yet, I always thought I should be more “normal.” But looking back, I’d say I never was.