(National Hospital, Psychiatric Ward,
Children’s Hospital Trust, 09/05/1972)
~ ~ ~
I don’t have any enemies at school because I don’t get into fights. However, there’s usually a lot of fighting at recess and some kids are always being picked on. There are kids who are strange, behave weird, or dress in silly ways.
One girl, who is called Mental Gunna, always starts crying when she’s teased. She is often all alone, talking to herself. She really is mental. Sometimes lots of kids club around her and tease her until she starts crying. I think it’s sick. I’d never do that.
They’re all always teasing this boy in the class they call Rubber Tarzan, like the character in the book by Ole Lund Kirkegaard. Sometimes someone spits in their palm, and tells him to eat the spittle. And he does. Then they all start laughing, and he does, too. It’s like he hasn’t figured out they’re making fun of him.
My friends at school aren’t necessarily my friends at home. I play with most of the kids in my street. My best friend is Kristján Þór. He’s also my cousin. He doesn’t have any friends but me. We’re always together. We play Legos and Action Man. Kristján Þór is in my class, too. I mostly stopped playing with Stebbi when I started hanging out with Kristján Þór. Other classmates are more like acquaintances, with whom I only play occasionally. Most of them are always practicing soccer. I don’t enjoy soccer except in small doses. I’d never go to soccer practice. I don’t get it, and can’t ever score. Soccer is a difficult and complicated game: I never know what to do until long after I’m supposed to do it. And so no one wants to be on my team.
I’d rather have a snowball fight or play chase during recess than soccer. I do have a Liverpool FC bag and support Liverpool but that’s more to side with others.
I find it annoying being at school when the weather’s good. Those days, I’d rather be outside playing. I think it is unfair to have school during good weather or excellent amounts of snow.
I’m no good at learning. The teacher is always telling me to quit making noise.
— Less chit-chat, Jón!
I think chit-chat is a funny word. I make a lot of chit-chat. I like to rhyme it.
— Kit chit-chats with Nat, Nat chit-chats with Kit, Kit and Nat chit-chat…
— Shush!
Sometimes the teacher sits me away from the other kids, so I’m not bothering them; she sits with me and makes me study. I don’t learn much, even then. Everything is too hard.
My school is an open school. There are no classrooms; instead, everyone learns together in an open space or goes to their homeroom. You don’t get grades like in other schools but instead you’re given comments. You can get Good, Decent, or Fair. Good is best. Yet it really means the same thing as Decent. But in the old days it was different: Good meant best of all. I don’t ever get G in any of my comments. I’m typically given D. Then usually an explanation: Slow progress. Often makes a racket. Disturbs other children.
I find schoolbooks the worst books in the world. They’re difficult. It is like they’re made to be annoying. I get a pain in my forehead from looking at them. Even the pictures in them are annoying. I don’t follow them and I don’t want to learn about them. I only ever enjoy them if there are stories.
I get a sense of suffocation from learning. I get the same feeling when I’m forced to learn as I do when I’m forced to eat food I find disgusting.
I try to avoid learning at home. I always tell my mom that I learned everything I need to learn at school. Sometimes she believes me or doesn’t feel like chasing me but sometimes she makes me study in my room and sits over me and I don’t get to go until I’m done with the things I’ve got to do.
I have to practice handwriting. It sucks. I have to write the same letter over and over again. I can’t write the letters so that they fit in the lines. They’re usually either too small or too large, or too fat or even too skinny. They’re nothing like letters.
I write ugly. I don’t enjoy what I’m writing because it’s so ugly and stupid. I can’t write in a straight line so what I write always slopes down and even goes onto the line below.
No one in my class writes as badly as I do.
Jón Gunnar is a 5-year old boy whose parents came to the ward because of his behavioral problems. They say he displays violence, is compulsive, has an obscene vocabulary, doesn’t take care of his toys, has no sense of time and space and has difficulty concentrating. Furthermore, he finds it impossible to write the letter J correctly.
(National Hospital, Psychiatric Ward,
Children’s Hospital Trust, 09/05/1972)
He is very cocksure of himself, quickly deciding he wants to draw for me, but not doing so very successfully; he doesn’t seem fully in control of his imagination. Next he draws all the letters in the alphabet that are important, and that is I, an inverted J, and A. His parents emphasize that it is impossible to teach him to write J correctly.
(National Hospital, Psychiatric Ward,
Children’s Hospital Trust, 02/04/1972)
Grammar is also incredibly difficult and frustrating. You have to decline words and know what sort of words they are. Some are nouns and some are adjectives. And then there are particles and adverbs. I can’t remember the difference between them and always muddle them together. I also don’t care. I don’t want to learn about this. I don’t think I need it.
In my school, there are no exams. Instead, we have quizzes. When there is a grammar quiz, I try to do as well as I can. But I still make lots of errors, especially with adverbs and particles, but also with the other things. I mainly guess. Most of what I get right is not because I know the rules but because I remember how the word looks or else I just guess right.
Spelling is more difficult. You have to learn the rules of how words are written. I find all the rules annoying, especially the y/ý-rule. If it was up to me, then I wouldn’t have an ypsilon. You can’t hear the difference when people are talking.
When I read, I look carefully at the words and try to remember their shapes. That’s the best way I can remember how they’re written, since I don’t know the rules. I’ve no idea, for example, why a person writes Christ and not Cryst, the way you say it, or wonder instead of wander. But I remember, so it doesn’t matter.
Math is the most difficult of all. If there is one thing I wouldn’t have to learn, that’s it. I’m so far behind in it. Other kids are beginning to learn division but I’m still in subtraction. I only know the easiest things. I don’t know how to carry over. I can’t ever remember how it’s done.
Most people know all the times tables. I only know one times and two times and ten times tables. When I’m studying math, it’s like the numbers are made of little parts that run about in all directions as soon as I look at them.
I find nothing in the world as frustrating as math. I find it more frustrating than sitting on a hard bench at a funeral, in too-tight shoes and my best clothes, which scratch and itch all over. When I study math, I feel like I’m choking, like it’s drowning my soul.