Where I live its legal to grow weed and one of the people I’ve befriended here is letting me use some space in his basement to grow some plants. I figured because I’ve grown some weed in Florida once upon a time, that I’m an expert! To be clear I don’t think that at all, but I do think I know more than the average Joe about growing weed.

I got some clones from an unknown person on Facebook marketplace. He gave me 4 different plants or strains. Citrus Lime Runt, Kush Mints, Sour Diesel & Dark Knight. The Dark Knight or DK plant looked as though it had been laid on its side or had been pressed up against a wall and forgotten about. The other 3 were young clones but the dark knight was already about 8-10” when I got it. Within a few days I almost killed the plants. I didn’t realize how vital humidity was for Marijuana plants. Being from Florida I’d never experienced any talk about humidity or needing enough of it. Usually we were discussing de-humidifiers not humidifiers. My plants started dying immediately. My goal when getting clones is to give them a comfortable home that suits them, then watch them for 24-48 hours to see how they’re doing. I don’t like to fertilize immediately because you never know what the previous person did or didn’t do.

While I was in my early discover phase with my new four plants, they did nothing but look worse and worse as each day went on. The leafs started curling and the tips started looking like they had nitrogen burn. I started texting the person I got them from asking if he nuked them before giving them to me. Thats actually what I thought at first, that the person I got the clones from had sabotaged me or set me up to fail. I guess thats the problem, or one of the problems, with being raised to fail like I was. I was de-educated growing up. Information purposely kept from me. They realized when I was in kindergarten or perhaps 1st grade, that I was gifted beyond compare. Actually, I think they knew far in advance; before I started school at Talbot.

In elementary school I got into something called “the gifted program” which, in short, is a small group that separated from our regular class group and did little puzzles or exercises. Truth be told, I don’t remember anything about the gifted program, other than that it was usually me and 2 other students and we would sit in a windowless room somewhere in our brand new school, Talbot Elementary. If I recall correctly there were times I was in the small room by myself but usually there were 1-2 other students in there with me. I seem to recall the students being from other classes but don’t recall if they were in my grade or not. I have to assume they were. I don’t recall any of the others in the program though which is odd, I’d think one or more of my own classmates would have been selected, and in fact they may have been for all I know. For one reason or another my memory of that time is not as sharp as I’d like it to be.

There are a few notable memories I do have from the gifted program and from my kindergarten/1st grade years. The more I write about it, and the more I think on it. I seem to remember that the “gifted program” began for me in the 1st grade and there was no mention of it during kindergarten. I remember being told that we were in the program not because we had done something wrong, and not because we needed additional schooling. We were told it was because there was something special about us, and they way we thought or they way we would go about thinking. If a thorough explanation was offered I don’t recall what it was.

The main thing I recall about the gifted program, and something I did not like about it, was that we seemed to always be in a small windowless room that was very dimly lit. It wasn’t a broom closet, but close to it. I’d very much like to revisit the school and talk with them in depth about the gifted program as I know they still exist today. We were always being left alone. In fact the majority of the times I recall the gifted program and what we were doing, we were alone not doing anything. We would be given a task or perhaps told to watch something then do a task, to be clear about my memories they’re mostly unclear. I do remember sitting in that small windowless room, sometimes by myself and sometimes with others. I remember sitting there thinking to myself, wondering when the teacher was going to be back. It was always some teacher that I didn’t know. I’m not sure if they rotated or if I simply can’t recall who they were but I seem to think they were female teachers. There we would sit, doing nothing, maybe talking among ourselves. I recall sitting in that dimly lit room that was so dark the lights were almost out, just sitting, waiting for the teacher to come back. There were no toys to play with. Why did she always leave us alone in there? Were there other children to attend to who were also doing gifted program type things? Did she have another class of children that she was attending to while she did this? Revisiting the subject leaves me with more questions than answers. I do remember the things we did weren’t typical math / english type things, they more seemed to do with questions about different shapes and designs but as I stated previously, I simply don’t have the clear memory of that time I would like to have. Just bits and pieces with the overlying tone being sitting in that stupid dark room with nothing to do.

My older brother, who in my opinion was blatantly more intelligent, was not in the gifted program. This fueled the flame I had inside which was subconsciously or consciously telling me something. The voice inside was telling me that even though they said the gifted program was something good, and it wasn’t because we needed help being educated or anything like that, I strongly suspected at that time I was placed the gifted program because I needed extra help, or because I had done something wrong. I couldn’t put my small finger on it, but I felt information was being kept from me in relation to the gifted program. What I concluded then, perhaps due to my brother’s teasing, was that I was in the gifted program because there was something, in fact, wrong with the way I thought or wrong with my brain, that they were giving me extra help and attention to try and make me more intelligent. I believe I ran this idea by the gifted teacher and was told I was wrong, that I didn’t need additional help. I was never told that I was more intelligent than the other students, if that was the case. Now, as an adult, I can see the folly in telling a 1st grade student that they are more intelligent than all his classmates. The issues and problems that would inherently arise from doing such a thing are obvious to me and should be to most people.

I did not particularly like the gifted program. Mostly because I didn’t fully understand it, or the point of it. In fact, I may have even been told that there were no right or wrong answers. Who ever heard of such foolishness I could not say at the time. I did think the idea of “no wrong answers” rather ridiculous then and I still find it rather off putting now as an ‘adult’. The main thing I didn’t like about the gifted program was that stupid dark boring room. Sometimes we were left sitting in there for 10 minutes or longer, which to a 1st grader feels equal to approximately 1-2 hours of normal time. I can clearly remember being taken from my class to participate in ‘gifted program’ related activities but oddly, I cannot remember returning to my classroom, not once. Obviously I found my way back to my classroom. People would have immediately sounded alarms if I had gone missing or wondered off, but such a thing was nearly impossible at that age. We were constantly under adult supervision and I don’t think any of us had the gumption to wonder off away from adults. No matter how curious I became about things, I didn’t venture outside of my comfort zone. It is odd though, I recall the feeling of walking away from my classmates, being singled out and taken from the classroom. I recall it happening on numerous occasions distinctly because I was leaving my friends, my classmates. None of them did come with me from what I recall which added to the being singled out feeling I recall so distinctly. I believe I still recall how to get to that small room we used to sit in from my first grade classroom.

I still remember the construction going on. There was talk, chatter of Talbot and talk of me going to school there. My older brother, Daniel, had already been going to school at “metcaf’ (spelling). Emma and I would to pick Daniel up everyday. The only thing I recall is being bored in my car seat waiting in a line of cars to pick him up. It was always bright and sunny when we picked Daniel up from Metcaf & I found the whole regular school situation mysterious. I knew it was more serious than pre-school. Preschool hadn’t been a daily part of my routine for such a long time, I could only remember bits a pieces. We would drive by Stepping Stones often, so often that I didn’t make a point to look at it every time we went by. Occasionally we would go to the church which hosted Stepping Stones for various home schooling events which were to be a regular part of my life in the years to come.

Recently I had a dream where I was putting together incredibly complex math equations but the equations were already done, I just had to combine them together in such a way that they would all work. It felt like I was solving equations for mining crypto which could be exactly what I was doing. If there is a "secret space program" its probably period of time which one is taken away from their parents and brought down into the underworld to be assaulted. Its also possible that the period of time children are away, they are plugged into some kind of super computer and their brain power is used. But used for what exactly? Everything seems to be sick jokes and games with these people/creatures. I believe the "secret space program" is code for one of those two things, perhaps both. If I'm correct, I know I was brough back to the surface and reunited with my family at ITS A SMALL WORLD at Disney World in Orlando Florida. I know that sounds crazy, but I've been right about everything else so it would sort of fall in line that I'm correct about this as well. I'm not going to re-live the whole experience now but I do believe I was taken underground and was brought back up to the surface and placed on Its a Small World. LOL..