The Last Time I Looked Out The Window

The Last Time I Looked Out The Window
By. Steve Zwilling

It was November 3rd, 2004 when I last I looked out the window. It may not make sense now, but it will when I am done. I was 17 years old and I had just received a 3-day suspension for being tossed out of a class for the third time in 3 days. The principal called me down to his office and gave me the shbeal about being responsible and not doing drugs, even though drugs were far off of my “to-do list.”
My mother came in looking like the Red Queen after the cards painted her roses red. I have never seen her face in such a bright cluster of crimson. It reminded me of a red hot air balloon barreling at me with centripetal force where I was the center.
“Again, Jonathan, again?” she yells in a scowling tone, “All I do is work for you and your brother and this is how you repay me?”
“I am sorry mom-“
“Sorry is not going to cut it this time, I-“ she pauses with a confused stare, “What do you think I should do Principal Hurley?”
“Well my dear, I believe you should send him to therapy.”
Therapy? Who needs therapy? I couldn’t help but ask myself why they think that. I just got into a little trouble here and there; it’s not like I shot somebody or robbed a convenience store, I mean come on.
“I will get better I promise. Don’t send me to therapy. Please” I pleaded like Oliver asking for more supper.
“You said you would get better last time and the time before that. When is it going to change?”
“It will change now, I promise” I exclaimed as confidently as possible.
“You’re darn right it will change because you’re going right to therapy.” My mother shouted.
“I already called; he is expecting you anytime now.”
“Thank you Principal. I appreciate your help,” she said appreciatively.
My mother flicked her long black hair behind her head and looked straight into my eyes with disapproval. I felt like to black dots were burning holes through my body. She nudged me out of the principal’s door and then outside into the car.
We were on out way to the therapy office and I was hoping to run one over on my mom. So I thought I would give it a try:
“Mom you know all he is going to do is send me back to school and tell me to be good. Then, you will have spent all this money,” I said in a clearly faked concern.
“Johnny, you know what…you’re right.”
I couldn’t believe it. It was almost too easy. I felt like I didn’t even put an honest effort in. Frankly, I was kind of disappointed and looking for the challenge of convincing her.
“I will take you right home after we go to this one place,” she stated in a caring pitch.
“Alright momma, I love you.”
“I love you too.”
So we drove about a mile longer passing the strip mall and a long, drawn out parking lot filled with used cars owned by a guy named Buck. The building was a large pink building with white shudders on the window; it looked like somebody’s house. It kind of looked like those dentist offices that are formed from old three bedroom bungalows.
“Who lives here mom?” I said
She turns to me with a disappointed, yet apologetic stare, “Now I don’t want any trouble out of you just come on in here.”
“Why would I give you-,” then I realized that we were at the office. “Mom, mom please I don’t want to do this. I don’t want kids at school referring to me as the crazy kid.”
“It is going to be fine, honey. Don’t make me feel any worse than I do now.”
For some reason I felt confident in my mom’s words and gave into the offer. The building had a large wooden door with translucent windows. The office smelled like a typical office with an overabundance of carnations and latex.
“Appointment for Jonathan Rixon,” said my mother.
“Yes ma’am, Dr. Kavarcien will be right with you,” the cute young secretary said with long blonde locks and teeth as big a Chiclets.”
As I sat in the office I admired the painting on the walls that were filled with scenes of a sunset. I have never noticed it before, but a lot of offices have pictures of sunsets. It must be settling to the eye before something serious happens. For some reason, that made the situation and me uncomfortably eerie.
The door by the counter opens up and the young secretary sends me to the back of a long hallway that is clearly parallel with the door. As I walk past the other rooms, I notice that there are plaques of many kinds on the wall. They looked like awards and accomplishments; I am not going to lie, I was quite impressed by the elongated collection of plaques and certificates bolted to the pale al wall.
When I arrived at the end of the hall there was a man with coke-bottle glasses and a finely trimmed white beard. He was no bigger than the average height of an older man, but he spoke with a voice that rumbled my chest.
“Hello Jonathan, I am Dr. Kavarcien. I will be keeping you company and asking you some questions. What do you say we talk a little bit?” he questioned cheerfully.
“Sure” I replied.
He began to ask some personal questions about my family and my friends, but they were not too personal so I had no problem answering them. Questions like:
‘How is your relationship with your brother and how often to you hang out with your friends?’
Really not bad ones at all, but then odd questions started arising, questions I didn’t really understand:
‘Are your work-habits becoming different? Are you having trouble paying attention to television when you watch it?’
I did not understand the relevance of any of this, but I answered the questions honestly and he gave me an awkward gaze, holding his chin. He just stood silent humming like there was something particular that he couldn’t put his finger on.
“Have you ever thought of committing suicide?” he said in an abrupt fashion.
“What no, not at all. Why would you ask me that?
“Just answer the questions and I will explain later,” he griped, “Do you get nervous very easy?”
“Hardly ever,” I scowled.
He hummed holding his chin again. I couldn’t help but notice he kept writing something down in his log; I felt uncomfortable every time I heard the pencil scratch the paper. He then told me to stand up and walk over to another room. The cold, distant room smelled like fake flowers and Elmer’s glue. I immediately wanted to leave because I am allergic to white, dripping glue, but that is beside the point. I felt uncomfortable in my own shoes.
“I am going to have you do some tests. Is that alright with you Johnny?” he asks caringly.
“Yeah, s-sure, no problem” hesitating with my answer.
The first test that he gave me was called an Embedded Figures Test, which was kind of a neat picture that the doctor held. It was a black and white picture of an Indian chief’s head and that was it. It looked like it had been through some years.
“What else do you see in the picture?” questioned the old man.
“Umm…” I examined the picture.
Then I noticed it. It was also an Eskimo looking into the sunset.
At first, it was an Indian chief with his hair on the right side of the page and a large noise on the left side of the page with a prominently square chin. I can’t believe how I never noticed it before: His chin was the Eskimos coattail, the nose was the Eskimos arm, and the sunset was the Indians hair. I couldn’t believe it. I was actually having an entertaining time at the doctor’s office and here I thought I was going to be miserable.
After he confirmed my test, he had me take another test. This test was called The Alternative Uses Task, which sounded easy enough. The doctor asked me to list as many possible uses for a doorstop.
“Paperweight, brick, weapon, football, and-“
“Okay that’s plenty good, good. You are doing a great job. Now we are going to try something different,” touching my shoulders, as old men tend to do to support younger men.
He handed me a pill that was half blue and half clear with little pebbles in the pill.
“What is this?” I asked concerned
“It will help you pay attention. It is only temporary.”
So I took the pill and waited for about a half an hour answering more questions about what I do with art and my views on creativity. Finally, I started to feel a sudden rush, like a tidal wave just rushed through my body.
“Doc, I feel weird.”
“Like how son?”
“Like I want to run really, really fast” as my eyes began to flicker from picture-to-picture on the wall.
“Well good that is what we want. Now let’s do the test’s again.”
So we performed the same tests again, but I felt like I was a lot more in tune with them than I was before. I felt like I could do all the tests and then undo them better than I actually did them before. I felt like I was at my ultimate peak of concentration.
“Well, how do you think you did?” he questioned.
“Rather well, if I say so myself.”
“That you did, but do you think you did any better?”
“A lot better” I said confidently.
“Well, you actually did better on the first test, but worse on the second, but that is alright, it really does not mean anything,” explaining with his nose hairs flapping in the wind, “but there is something I need to tell you and if you have any questions, or are confused, stop me at any time.”
“Yes sir” I said.
He began to explain the importance of paying attention and why trouble in school was not the answer for quite sometime. It was like every other elder person who was lecturing me in my life. The pill began to wear off. So I proceeded to tune him out and looked out the window, until he slammed his hand on my shoulder, “Repeat what I just said.”
“T-That I need to whip it into shape” spouting off my typical answer to the question when somebody is giving me the 3rd degree.
“Wrong Mr. Rixon, I said that I have panties on my head.” I began to laugh because I thought he was trying to make an honest joke with me. He seemed like a nice guy.
“You see Jonathan, you possess the symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder” he declared in a rather obtuse manner throwing his hands in a whirl wind fashion to every vowel he sounded out, like I was a mentally-disabled child, “the symptoms are commonly diminished attention span, you are distracted very easily, and a tendency to overlook details.”
“I know a lot of kids like that.”
“Well do they take Adderall?” with a rebuttal.
“Well I-I don’t know. I never asked.”
He stood up in his chair and motioned for me to come back to the previous room that smelt that same, but excluded the glue and replaced it with latex. We both sat down and he stared me right in the face concerned, “You’re going to start taking Adderall. It will make you feel more in tune with your attention span.”
“No, no way” I cried out it in agony and puzzlement, “The kids at school will make fun of me. I will never be able to show my face in there again if they see me popping pills.”
“You will only have to take one a day before you go to school. Remember how great you felt earlier? Well that was a temporary psycho-stimulant drug called Ritalin. I only gave you a small amount for the tests; it wore off rather quickly and that’s when I could tell that you needed it.”
It did make sense to me. The pill made me feel like I was superman or something. I felt like I could do my math homework, run a mile and talk to every single person I see along the way. He told me that the pill was going to make me feel enthusiastic to learn and that I will pay better attention to my surroundings.
The next day at school I first started taking the pill and I was sitting in my math class. That was the class that I was previously kicked out of and in result, had to frequent the therapy office. The office that smelt like a glove covered carnation. I was in tune with everything and anything that came my way. I felt like I could teach the class if I wanted too. I began to speak so much that she threatened to kick me out if I was not quiet, “Mr. Rixon, shut up or get out,” she said irately.
Usually I was a loner in art class in terms of doing the work. I was artistic like every average student in the class, but my friends were the firmly labeled “trouble-makers.” I did my work, but I was always done early, in turn making me talk to my friends more, but I couldn’t help it, I was so bored. Today was different though. I was on the new miracle pill. I thought I would be able to build a miniature scale of the empire state building in about two seconds if I needed too, but I knew that was a bit far-fetched.
“Now class we are going to fuse your different types of thinking together. First, we will identify what is in the picture and how many pictures are similar to that picture,” the teacher said cheerfully.
There was a large table located in the middle of this classroom. On the table were eight different sets of pictures, some were in three and some were in four. The pictures all seemed to be the same type of thing, it was a black lamp sitting in front of a white wall, but the wall seemed to change color’s in each picture.
“Notice anything different about some of the pictures?” the teacher asked in an interested tone, “Some of the pictures should have some underlying meaning in them.”
Then it hit me, I remembered the task from yesterday. It was an Embedded Figures Task and that is the one I excelled on. One of the four pictures that I had was a black lamp in front of a white wall. The top of the lamp was shaped like a tornado with a rod coming through the bottom of it. Only a third of the lamp was showing so when you looked at another perspective it looked like the bottom half of a girl in a bikini. Her legs came out where the sides of the tornado and the shadow on the outline of the wall made a leg formation. Then the light itself looked like the bottom half of a European style men’s swimsuit or a ladies bikini.
“This is a special figures test isn’t it?” I asked nonchalantly, knowing the answer.
“Yes you are correct Jonathan, great job” pleased that I was paying attention, which she is not use to, “Now your next step is to draw your own.”
I was at a loss. I could not think of any way to do this. Looking at the picture seemed just fine, but when it came down to actually forming it, I could not get my mind around the idea.
“Now your divergent thinking comes into play,” she said charismatically, looking around the class like she drew on the board an unsolvable math equation, “Let’s see who has the right mindset.”
You would think the drug would help me out, but it did not. I was at a loss. Some people came close, but many were left with regular picture, such as Dolphins that form to skies and other attempts that didn’t make sense.
It was reminiscent of what the doctor said and it all made sense now: dealing with any straightforward knowledge with simple tasks requires my convergent thinking, but when it came to my independent thinking. I was at a loss. The pill isn’t what I thought it was after all. My attention span is better, but I don’t feel anymore enhanced or creative. From there on, I never stared out the window in class again.