You can usually find me by myself, lost in a world of my own creation.

I’m constantly daydreaming.

These days, I think it’s called maladaptive daydreaming, a curse in which involuntary vivid fantasies often replace real-life interaction. My experience is probably somewhere on the borderline between maladaptive and immersive daydreaming. No doubt it’s been a coping mechanism for me.

I recently let a co-worker in on some of my daydreams on the world of Alcrest that I’ve been creating and fleshing out for the past few years.  How I see it in my mind and simply write what I see, rather than make it up on the spot. How I go there in the quiet moments between conversations.

As I went more and more down the rabbit hole, she became increasingly amazed, and probably overwhelmed at the level of detail of the languages and lore I’d thought up. She asked me if I was on the spectrum, or if I was a some kind of genius. 

I laughed. I’m sure that I’m an intelligent person, and maybe a little above average. I know my mind works differently than others. But a true genius?

No. 

Early in my life I met someone that I would consider a real genius. A child prodigy. And meeting her was one of the most important moments of my life.

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It was a cold day in January of 1993. I’d just moved in with my father and his new wife into her family’s three-story home in suburban Medford, Long Island. I enrolled at the nearby Eagle Elementary School, which was within walking distance.

I was in the first grade. 

Even then, I thought that I didn’t quite fit in. We’d sit in groups and read out loud from small books and I remember thinking that they all read so slowly. They had trouble with reading, writing and comprehension. It annoyed me to no end. 

There was a girl in my class though who was able to keep up with me.

Her name was Kimberly, and she had long dark hair, dark brown eyes and skin the same color as mine. We became fast friends. 

In the second grade, things at home started to get bad. My stepmother was becoming physically abusive, and so my personality started to change at school as well. It’s true, what they say. The ones who make people laugh, do so to hide the pain inside.

I became a class clown, doing whatever I could to make people smile. I’d tell stupid jokes at the lunch table, act out in class and say ridiculous things to get a laugh. I didn’t think much about anything else, other than my terrible life at home and trying to make sure that nobody at school would ever know about it.

For half the week we’d go to the music room to learn music on our recorders, those plastic flute like instruments, or to the art room to paint and learn about classical art. I didn’t take any of it seriously, intentionally playing off-key, and goofing off with my friends. 

Kimberly always took it seriously; she took everything seriously. I didn’t pay much attention to her, until our music instructor made an announcement one day that Kimberly was going to play us all a song on the piano. It was a song that she wrote and composed herself.

I was in disbelief, I had no clue that she had any sort of talent like that. I assumed it would be just as bad and off-key as everyone else’s playing.

She got up to the old wooden upright piano and said that she composed the song and named it ‘Raindrops’. I joked about that with my friend Mike. She bowed, and sat down on the bench.

And then she began to play.

I can still hear the notes now. 33 years later and I can still hum the melody. 

It was amazing, and for once I had nothing to say. No jokes to make. My friend had this talent and I had no idea about it. I sat there, just in awe of her. I remember that her birthday was on New Year’s day, and I wondered if this was the distance that six months of age was. Though she was only older than me by a few months, in that moment it felt like a chasm had opened between us.

And I suddenly felt that I was just as behind as everyone else.

The two of us became best friends. We were constantly number one and number two, with her always at the top, and me second. But I didn’t mind that. And of course, by the end of that school year I developed a huge crush on her.

She was my first love.

We didn’t share a class in the third grade, but we hung out at recess every single day. There were other friends in our group, but the core was me for the boys, and Kimberly for the girls. Our friendship held the mixed group together.

We shared a class again in the 4th grade. I think by this time, the crush was mutual. But I was dumb, and immature. I didn’t catch on. And I would soon do something that would ruin our relationship forever.

I was still a class clown, and still said dumb things for attention. I think the other kids usually expected me to crack jokes at their or at someone else’s expense. So, when I was being serious, I would be mistaken for making fun.

We passed by her twin sisters walking in the hall, and Kimberly pointed them out to me. She cherished her younger sisters. They all looked alike. Tall and lithe, the sisters were dancers and they all walked with a distinctive bouncy gait.

I told her that I already knew that the twins were her sisters. I could tell, because the three of them walked the same, with a bounce. I did a little bounce in my step to emphasize.

I wasn’t trying to say anything bad about anyone, but it was still stupid and insensitive of me. But I was trying to explain what I meant.

It didn’t matter though. Everyone in our group laughed like I just made the funniest joke they’d ever heard. Kimberly didn’t laugh.

She cried and told me that she hated me. She called out to our teacher, Mr. Lawlor, and told him that she didn’t want to be in the same class as me for 5th grade. And she told me to never speak to her again. It was my first time making a girl cry.

I was hurt. I apologized, I genuinely didn’t mean anything by it. But I was also slightly indignant, and decided to let her have it her way.

We never spoke again.

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We didn’t share a class in the 5th grade like she wanted. But, that was not the last time I saw her. I still would come in second to her at every turn.

I won the spelling bee for my class, and went on to the school-wide spelling bee. She won for her class, and so we were on stage together with the other 5th grade classes.

It came down to me and her.

Her word, “veterinary“. She spelled it on the microphone correctly as I whispered it along with her. I was happy for her.

My word, “eulogy“. I spelled it ‘u-l-o-g-y’, and lost. She got first place, and I got second. We took a picture together that appeared in our yearbook.

I wouldn’t see her again until the 7th grade. We went to the same middle school, but Tremont Middle was a mix of the two elementary schools in the area, so it was much bigger. My friend group grew. I had a girlfriend.

But I’d still see Kimberly from time to time.

I wasn’t allowed to attend the 3-day 7th grade class field trip in that November because my stepmother did not want to pay the $50 trip fee, and I instead spent those days doing self-study in random classrooms. Kimberly was in one of the classes. She’d skipped a grade and didn’t go on the trip either. She was incredible.

She was really close to a guy in the 8th grade, with blonde frosted tips. I saw them flirt in the class and I was green with envy. But what could I do? She hadn’t spoken to me in nearly three years by then, and I already had a girlfriend myself.

A month later, and I moved away.

Ever since that autumn day in the second grade, I’ve had a fixation for the piano. I’ve tried many times to learn, and I listen to classical music all the time. Chopin is my favorite composer.

It’s become a lifelong infatuation.

I wonder what she’s up to these days. She’d be 40 now, like me. I hope she made the best of her life. I hope that she never gave up on the piano, and that sound that she made that has reverberated through my life.

The raindrops of genius surely fell on me that day, and drenched me in my own mediocrity. It was humbling.