Bart Simpson as an overlooked prodigy

The Simpsons defined a lot of my identity as a kid because it was the only show my family watched. There were brief periods I’d dabble in a Disney show, and we all liked The Critic, but The Simpsons was the only consistent television media—at least up through middle school. They’d taped every episode since I was two. To a large extent, I looked at the world through a Simpsons lens instead of looking at The Simpsons through a world lens. That was because I was too young to know much outside it. It introduced me to bands and plays and films and books that were referenced throughout the episodes. My siblings were the same way. In elementary school, my sister used to draw our family as Simpsons characters.

While the show was hilarious, it had a lot of poignant elements. Wasted potential was a recurring theme.

Lisa is presented as a genius daughter living in an intellectually stifling environment. She lives in a setting where education is scorned by her dad, brother, and peers. She’s an incredibly gifted achiever, but suffers anxiety and depression. Even people who want to encourage her, such as Marge, can’t relate to her on the same wavelength. Her teacher doesn’t appreciate her gifts. We know Lisa will be abundantly successful in the future, but she first has to power through loneliness and an uninspiring social landscape.

As the show progresses, we see that Bart is also highly intelligent. His teachers assume otherwise because he is an underachiever. One of the saddest and most eye-opening episodes was “Lisa’s Sax.” It shows the memory of Bart starting kindergarten in 1990, excited and hopeful. He begins to show signs of academic struggle, which seem to be due to a learning disability. (Evidence throughout the show points to ADHD and dyslexia. He can comprehend the ideas he reads, but has trouble visually processing the words. When he tries to read them aloud and organize them, they get all jumbled up. He also is hyperactive and distractable.) The teachers pick up on his difficulties, but they don’t try to guide him. They act as though it’s his fault. As a small child, his spirits are dashed and he starts to resent everything academic—especially the school administration. He develops a hardline anti-authority stance. Bart realizes he can gain popularity by being a wiseass, so he latches onto that. He yearns for the approval of the cool (bad) kids and tries hard to fit in. The rebelliousness is a powerful defense. He can act as though his academic struggles are a choice. He can pretend he had rejected school, rather than vice versa. Bart was a smart kid with several learning disabilities who slipped through the cracks. He was also overlooked because Lisa was clearly a prodigy. Her intelligence was just more academically inclined.

Bart’s brilliance shows up in his mischief. He orchestrates complex, well thought out pranks. He’s impressively motivated and organized—he just uses those gifts in ways that are not productive. Bart is not a mean person. He wants to be popular, but isn’t a bully. His empathy for social outcasts is expressed in his friendship with Milhouse, and his attempt to take Martin under his wing to show him how to be cool. Bart’s pranks take on a “fuck the establishment” stance and he targets those in power. There are times when he develops sympathy for authority figures when he realizes they’re human. Any time he does something that genuinely hurts somebody, like getting Mr. Skinner fired or writing mock love letters to Mrs. Krabapple under a false identity, he feels terrible and tries to set things right.

I actually believe that Bart and Lisa are equally brilliant; they’re just in divergent directions. Some disagree because of “Bart the Genius,” the episode in which he’s sent to a gifted school and fails the accelerated program. Fans argue that if he was truly intelligent, he would have succeeded there. I see it differently. Bart had the potential to grasp that curriculum, but he lacked the external resources. He had never been exposed to the type of concepts and vocabulary or even the social culture that the genius kids were already immersed in. They lived in an insular world. He could have understood it if he’d had prior exposure. It’s like going into a foreign country where everyone speaks a language you don’t know. You could understand the ideas they’re expressing if the words were familiar. The ideas aren’t a barrier; the means of expressing them is. One could counter that Bart had been exposed to that type of intellectualism through Lisa, and so he was just naturally incapable. But I think he willfully ignored things Lisa could have taught him, because he associated academia with strife.

Homer is another factor limiting Bart’s ambition and instilling distrust of authority. This is, essentially, because Homer is abusive to Bart. He constantly berates him and makes him feel like a failure. He chases Bart around the house and even chokes him as punishment. Bart rebels against Homer, but also tries to impress him. He’s an abused child who longs for the approval of the parent who hurts him. Homer wants Bart to succeed at school, yet is dismissive of anything broad-minded. Bart responds by resisting Homer’s pressure to succeed, while also mimicking Homer’s scorn for intellectualism in order to relate to him. Bart adopts Homer’s resentment of authority. He additionally distrusts authority because Homer himself cannot be relied upon.

Whenever Bart and Lisa team up together, they are a remarkable force. They are counterparts, filling in each other’s weaknesses and enhancing one another’s strengths. Lisa does the analytical work, while Bart helps to organize and rile people up. He’s the charismatic agitator. Episodes that show their futures usually depict two possible paths. In both, Lisa is invariably successful. But Bart could go in one of two ways. In some scenarios, adult Bart is emotionally stunted and desperately dependent on Lisa. In others, he’s overcome his obstacles and is working alongside her, on her level. They are equally self-actualized and happy. Even though they’re fictional characters, I want so much to see him self-actualized. I want him to have the future where he’s a chief justice of the Supreme Court and looks back on his past with amusement. Lisa has her struggles, but we know she will succeed no matter what. She thrives as soon as she’s in a more stimulating environment, and even thrives without it—although with a lot of emotional turmoil. From what I’ve seen, Lisa is just as anti-establishment as Bart. The difference is that she resolves to beat the system by replacing it.

Bart and Lisa bicker a lot, but in the end, they are each other’s greatest allies. Both of them are characters who are, to a large extent, alone. Lisa doesn’t have friends. Bart has Milhouse, but Milhouse is more of a follower than a friend on equal wavelength. Lisa and Bart are really each other’s best friends—and, possibly, their only true friends at their point in life. They understand each other’s standpoints. They understand each other's pain. And, in the end, they each help the other achieve what seemed impossible on their own. They’ll never grow up on the show. But if the Simpsons universe ever seemed as real to you as it did to me, you’ve probably imagined their future lives and saw them become the best versions of themselves. They’re parallel, both when they suffer and succeed.

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I have more to say on this subject, especially relating to Homer and Marge. More will be written soon.

Crossroads and crosswords

I've decided that my life is essentially a crossword puzzle. Those of you who saw my essay about living with NLD know that I have a lot of trouble navigating space and make my way around with no sense of direction, so words are used to compensate for the void. And that's exactly how a crossword puzzle is filled out; finding the right words to fill in blanks and trying to make them fit together. That's where words and space converge; crosswords and crossroads. It's the interim where my life stands on tiptoe, trying to find a harmony between the two.

Life on the Spectrum

           One of the last things people learn about me is that I’m on the autistic spectrum.

            When I’m telling someone about myself, that’s usually the last fact included. It’s not that it isn’t important. It’s just something I usually omit because once people know you’re near-autistic, it reshapes their whole perception of you and you start to be defined by that context.

            I was born with NLD, or Nonverbal Learning Disorder. It’s similar to Asperger’s Syndrome, distinguished by only a few divergent traits. I have only ever met one other person who has it. NLD affects everyone differently. I’ve searched in online groups for others who function in the same way, but so far, nobody else’s version seems identical to mine. I’m not saying this to sound like some pretentious, unique snowflake. If anything, it would be great to find someone whose case I could relate to.

            While I can’t explain what living with the disorder is like for everybody, I can describe how it is for me.

            To imagine how I’ve spent most of my life, try to remember the drunkest you’ve ever been. Not giddily tipsy, but crashing-into-walls sloshed. You’re easily distracted yet struggle to multitask. You get lost all the time and can’t drive. A short leap looks like a mile’s trek, and a stranger’s silence sounds like a prime opportunity to treat them to stories about your most awkward first dates and complain about your bacne. This is hyperbolic, but it’s how I felt throughout all my years growing up—without the influence of any substances.

            My disability was first identified in fourth grade. I was desperate for a diagnosis so my teachers would know it wasn’t my fault. They’d get frustrated because they thought I was smart but I couldn’t follow directions. Despite my knack for writing, I wasn’t allowed into the gifted program. They only included kids who had straight A’s in every class.

            I was clumsy in many ways. Synchronized dancing in theater camp was a hilarious nightmare. I was hapless at sports. I once managed to stub my toe while my foot was three feet above the ground.

            The social clumsiness was a lot more painful. I had no verbal filter. Ideas were constantly bursting into mental subthreads, as if my brain were the original Reddit—including the trolling. It felt like word bubbles appeared above my head and would pop unless I filled them in immediately. I expressed thoughts with little to no awareness of how cutting, excessively unabridged, or just plain weird they were. Other kids teased me, but they usually wouldn’t take it too far in my presence. I could eviscerate them with comebacks that left everyone laughing. People seemed to laugh at me and with me in equal measure. I had trouble keeping friends. They rarely confronted me directly, but I’d hear what they said to each other. They called me a ditz and an airhead. They said I was always seeking attention. The last judgment was true, although a lot of them were doing the same. They were just less obvious about it, so my lack of subtlety allowed them to point at me and direct peoples’ notice away from their own similar behavior.

It wasn’t until I was twenty that my head began to clear. The spatial disorientation, obliviousness to my surroundings, and struggle with transitions is still pervasive. But my social awareness is now sharper, and sobering up to it was mortifying. I began to profusely apologize to those I’d offended in the past, handing out regrets like street flyers. Eventually I came to stop over-apologizing and strive for more balance.

            Others have told me I’m insightful. That might be true, but I’m not perceptive. It took me years to grasp the distinction.

            My consciousness does not exist in a linear and uninterrupted flow, but in snapshots with vacant spaces in between. In childhood I used to think of them as “blank-outs”; those lapses in which my brain briefly freezes and buffers. It’s like living within ellipses, jumping along islands instead of walking a continuous strip of land.

            This also means my mind doesn’t create an internal map of my whereabouts. When out in public and trying to find my way, it’s like I’m spinning and perpetually dizzy. This makes me a prime target for predators who notice I look lost and try to coerce me into their cars.

            For all of these reasons, I cannot move freely throughout the world. Instead I navigate through cyberspace, imagination, and ideas. I travel in stories and songs, with words as my compass. My husband says I seem to experience language in entirely my own way, and it’s true. Words are their own dimension. They’re like an additional sense.

            Because most of my journeys are not physical, my artistic and aesthetic taste is vivid sometimes to the point of garishness. I can’t surround myself with muted colors and grayscale music. I need atomic glitter bombs and guns that shoot rainbows. I need songs that flutter with caffeinated beats. I crave whatever makes ears tickle, eyes pop, and hearts roar. Maybe people with more external adventures prefer to settle into a mellow existence in between. That’s completely understandable, but it’s too low-key for me.

            People expect me to have more tattoos because I’m so stimulated by visuals. I don’t need them. I’m made of images and phrases and stains which I carry under my skin and express when I choose to. So is everyone else. Many of my most creative friends are inked, and I love getting lost in the stories of their designs. I just prefer to keep my skin a blank page.

            Some friends jokingly ask if I’m tripping when I write like this. I’m not inclined toward drugs. Maybe it would make little difference if I did use them, because either way I’d be surfing on brain chemical waves, but it’s already intoxicating to inhale words and pass them on. To snort colors and patterns. Inject musical notes. There is no withdrawal and it costs you nothing. It’s all free, and it frees you.

            When I did smoke weed for the first time, it was a very strange experience. I said I didn’t feel anything but then proceeded to talk for two hours. I explained, in minute detail, exactly why my brain felt like a cupcake (because I was rising above my usual state like a cake in a pan, my head was inflated with light, fluffy thoughts, and I was over-baked).

            These types of mental vacations might make up for my inability to physically navigate if NLD didn’t also affect my career options. Because I can’t drive, and public transportation has to be planned so carefully, I have mostly been limited to working from home. I’ve only recently branched out. It can take me five hours to learn a simple bus route.

            Doctors can’t discern my IQ with normal tests because there’s such a chasm between my spatial and verbal intelligence. I spoke in full sentences at nine months old but couldn’t tie my shoes until third grade. I can explain how a color looks and feels to someone who has never seen it, but I have to count on my fingers for simple addition. Sometimes language can be a zero-sum game. Once I’m locked into its dimension, words are all I see and I stumble over everything else.

            When people hear that someone has a learning disability, they often assume they’re developmentally disabled. Years ago my dad was driving me to school and he wanted to park closer to the building because I could only recognize the location from one side, even though I went there every day. He told the parking lot attendant I had a learning disability and asked him to let us through. The guy appraised me as if I were a small child and said, “Can she get herself inside?” I was right next to him, but he addressed my father. As if I couldn’t answer the question.

            This is the backdrop of my life, and it will be for as long as I live. But as distressing, discouraging, embarrassing and infuriating as these struggles can sometimes be, I don’t think I would exchange them for a chance to be “normal.” NLD may be a disability, but it’s my disability. By blurring my vision in certain areas, it’s helped me see so much more clearly in others. And it’s allowed me to show others what I see, to share a communal vision.

            NLD may have been delivered to me in a heavy box which I often find myself caught inside. But in the end, it still came as a gift.