true genius

I met this kid in high school named Abeeku, one of two certifiable undeniable geniuses I’ve met in my life. Our town has a news paper article about him, it reads:

…HONORS AND AWARDS: SkillsUSA Computer Programming Gold Medal; Student of the Semester; AP Scholar Award;  ********** County Superintendents' Association Scholar; National Honor Society.

PLANS: Accepted to eight universities. Major in Computer Engineering at a college to be decided. (They didn’t mention they were all Ivy League)

Really odd fellow, was years ahead of us all, was done with the entire high school curriculum like a year or two early, he just hung out and learned portuguese through some online program our school had. I was in the computer science vocation with him and on the first day we were supposed to make the computer say

“Hello world”

This is a classic CS tradition, usually the first thing you’ll learn in a CS class. Abeeku made the computer animate some ducks swimming across the screen, later on he effectively reverse engineered a mario game during one of our first lessons while we were all still learning about strings and booleans.

He had some speech impediments, he would stutter a lot and seemed to struggle with language overall. He thought lingerie was pronounced “linger-ree” that was a funny afternoon on the school bus. One of my favorite things about high school was that, all the black kids sort of stuck together. There weren’t many of us, it was a “blue ribbon school” after all. One of the “good ones” or the only good one in our city depending on who you asked.

Anywhere else I’m sure Abeeku would have been bullied severely, but here he sat with all of us at the same lunch table every day. Football team, basketball, track, and much to the surprise of a lot of folks, the computer science and hardware vocation was filled with us too. We had a lot of great times in that cafeteria especially, and then one day, Abeeku ran away.

His parents were like mine, if not worse. It got to the point that he couldn’t bear to live under their roof and holed up in a storage container for a while, eventually renting out an apartment in a college building near *** for a little while before he went off to college.

It was a pretty barren place, I saw it once when brad and I went to buy mushrooms from him.

Before he got that apartment he’d asked if he could redirect his mail to my parent’s place and I said sure. College acceptance letters came flooding in like you wouldn’t believe, I was a bit jealous actually given I knew I’d have no such letters coming for me. One day after he ran away , his parents came to my place looking for him, I refused to give him up. They looked so sorrowful, Yet I felt no sympathy for them. They brutalized that kid. They beat him and tormented him and I can’t imagine what else, of course he ran away!!! I had the same scorn for them that I had for my own parents, though I hadn’t yet the gumption to run away myself. Me? I maybe deserved my beatings but a gift of a person like Abeeku?!?

They didn’t deserve such a one! It’s simply the way of our culture. A long chain and cycle of trauma induced via corporal punishment. It’s one of the reasons I have such a chip on my shoulder about the place I grew up.

No, I’m censoring myself, I HATE my country men, I wish the entire place to burn and I call for a curse upon ALL their IGNORANT AND FOOLISH HEADS.

I FUCKING HATE THEM AND I WANT THEM ALL TO DIE! I WANT THAT COUNTRY WIPED OFF THE MAP. I WANT IT NUKED AND I WANT THE SURROUNDING AREAS TO SUFFER, TO BE DESTITUTE FOR ALL ETERNITY AS A LESSON.

And yet, knowing it’s a long generational curse, perhaps I should have some compassion for my kinfolk.

But if I’m to be honest, I still hate them, in a vile, vitriolic and poisonous way. The kind of anger and hatred that hurts you for harboring it, but even knowing that, I’m unable to let go of it.

Well anyway, where was I?

Soon after his parents visited I dropped out high school, I didn’t keep up with anyone really except those that life sent my way but I always googled him from time to time.

I heard he’d gone to an ivy league school and was doing okay. He’s always at some new frontier tech start up when I search him up.


I was watching this anime about a genius girl who loves herbalism and medicine in ancient China. Her eccentricities remind me of Abeeku in some tiny ways. An older maternal figure observes her one day and notices there’s something on her mind, really bothering her.

She approaches the girl and says “something is really bothering you isn’t it?”

A memory is triggered. It’s late January of 2023. I’m just back from Europe, I’m still scarred from being sick and the break up is very fucking fresh. I’d been trying to play it off and take it in stride, maintain my usual demeanor. I must have been sitting quietly for an uncharacteristic amount of time.

My mom said “Aha wu we hu?”

It literally translated to english means means, “it’s bothering you isn’t it?” but it’s not quite that. There are connotations of being inflicted with a significant and long time status ailment. An ongoing yet final damnation. I was surprised she could tell, I assured her I was okay.

With this memory I remembered that my mom could be tender, and I missed her, and I wondered if nowadays she too is sorrowful like Abeeku’s parents were that day.

The girl in the anime, the herbal genius, she often suggests all these sorts of solutions and remedies that seem odd. I’m familiar with a decent bit of them because well-

One day someone from my home country said something like, if you have a headache or eat something too spicy put your feet in cold water. I was skeptical but… it worked! It works every single time!

Many such things yknow? “Old wives remedies” the history and efficacy of them fascinate me. Stuff like, “cursed is the child who when kissed on the forehead tastes salty”

Turns out, cystic fibrosis does that to you. No one had any clue what that was back then but they could tell by adjacent signs. True to the tale, those children died very quickly.

There’s one that I learned a few days and it’s stuck with me, it continues to echo in my mind.

when your scars itch,it’s going to rain. Immediately I got the sense that, it’s not just physical scars and literal rain.

So far it’s proven to be correct.

My scars itch.