Afrotistic, page 6
“Yep. I think so.”
“aiNite. aiLite.”
“What it does,” he said. It took me a while to understand what he meant by that, but when I did, I had an ah-ha moment.
“Good point. aiSenses. Because once I’ve finished, children can utilize all five senses to play with these. Well, maybe except for taste. And smell. ”
“Ha. Yes, perfect.”
“And then,” I said, interrupting, “we can make SensesLite, SensesPlus, SensesBold in further creations.”
“We?” he asked.
“Oh,” I said. I had honestly startled myself when I said “we”. “You can help if you want. I can use quiet and nice company sometimes.” He beamed. I did too. Then I said, “But we can only be work colleagues. We can talk to discuss business only. I don’t need any friends right now.”
I couldn’t tell if I was lying, but from the look of his dubious expression, I could tell that Samuel thought I was. What I did know was that adding him as a co-founder did nothing for my chances of Dean’s Merit Society, as I needed to be on a founding team of at least three.
At least, I thought, it’s a start.
“Why do you like this anyway? Is it AI? Why?” he asked after a while.
I hadn’t thought about that question, of why I was particularly interested in perfecting the robot toy. I guess I liked AI more than I liked people sometimes. Artificial intelligence isn’t confusing or vague. It’s not flaky and won’t say one thing when it meant to say another. I learned that it won’t spell out what the world is not, only what the world is. It won’t make our world feel rosy and happy. Or lazy and wrong. No, artificial intelligence at its core is concrete. It would amplify the flaws in our world and make us think and act. That’s why I liked it.
“I’m not sure,” I finally said, about the most eloquent technology out there.
We didn’t talk much for the rest of the barbeque. I asked him about his family, but he didn’t say much. I heard most of the gist from his mom when I took a turn at the parent table.
Samuel’s dad left when he was four. His father got overwhelmed with his needs and abandoned him, his mom, and his other siblings. His sisters were doing well. One’s at Vanderbilt, the other right here at the University of Buffalo. The sister at the University of Buffalo was studying Speech-Language Pathology and minoring in Disability Studies. She wanted to be a speech teacher for people like Samuel and Ray. They all were born and raised right in the heart of North Buffalo. Their oldest sister was finishing up studying Psychology and Pre-law. She wanted to be a disability rights lawyer. Ms. O’Brian emphasized they both wanted to help people like their brother. One by directly engaging and the other by representing him and other vulnerable groups if they were ever betrayed or were left like their father had done to them. They both seemed amazing. I asked if I could interview them for my YouTube channel.
“I haven’t made one yet,” I confessed when Ms. O’Brian probed further.
“She’s too worried about what people at her school would think if she made one,” my mom interrupted, to my chagrin.
“So, you’ve cut your hair into an afro, undercut your own father and invented something better, pitched it to a tough audience, and onboarded my son as an exec.” She was counting all this on her fingers at this point. “And you’re worried about what some brats at Orlando and West will think of you? Tuh.”
I smiled. My parents must’ve told her that I had a hard time in Orlando and was not having the best time at West.
“They’re not all brats,” my dad added. “We just need to dig through the bratty ones and find the good ones.” He patted my shoulder, also to my chagrin. Ray had gone groggy, and I went to put him to nap time before I went back to hang with Samuel. After we ate, we, ironically, spent the rest of the barbeque testing my aiSenses in silence.
CHAPTER TEN
WEEK 2
Rocks and pebbles.
aiSenses.
Rocks and pebbles.
aiSenses.
For some reason, that was all I could repeat in my head on the way to school.
Samuel’s naming prompts joined my invention, and it was becoming stronger and better. My odd family joined Samuel’s odd family, and we became two more empowered Black families. Samuel’s pebbles joined Ray’s pebbles, and they became larger than the rock that was placed right next to them. I wondered if I could continue to form rocks out of pebbles by increasing the number of people in my life. I decided there would be no better way to do that than to meet other autistic students at West, just like Samuel had met Ray and me. To find them, however, I needed to start an organization like those at Megafair. To do that, I needed Mrs. Johnson on board as an adviser.
The second week was our first week of the lunch period. I skipped cafeteria lunch on Monday and ate in Mrs. Johnson’s room. I had a couple of questions for her that day, but my first was to enquire if autistic people can become stronger together.
Mrs. Johnson’s frizzy red hair looked barely brushed today, a bit tangled and coarse. Plopping a ketchup-ridden tater tot in my mouth, I tried to conceal my humor of wondering how she’d dance to Willow Smith’s “Whip My Hair” song. Not gracefully, I imagined.
“Seems like you had a good weekend, Noa,” Mrs. Johnson said, smiling. “What brings you in today in such a pleasant mood?”
Urging myself not to tell her I was smiling and imagining her whipping her hair to Willow’s tune, I told her that I wondered how I could start my own student organization.
She raised an eyebrow and asked me if I had attended Megafair. If I had joined any clubs. If I attended any clubs. If I attended any a second time. I nodded to all but the last one and then cut her off before she stated the obvious that I should give it a second chance.
“I don’t need to be in a club for Dean’s Merit Society, I need to lead a club. I know more than the other people at the Computer Science Club, and no one talks to me there. I’m tired of it. I’m going just to focus on my design principles during the lab and free period.”
“Design?” Mrs. Johnson said, puzzled.
I sighed. “I’m creating design principles for aiSenses,” I said. “It’s an interactive toy for kids who don’t want to play with other kids. But it doesn’t count, though, cause all I have is one other co-founder and I need at least three total. I don’t want to onboard anymore at this point, so I’d rather just lead a student organization.” I hoped she wouldn’t probe further about what it was counted for.
“Aren’t there toys like that now?” She looked at me as if she could name hundreds on my cue.
“Yes, but—”
She looked at the paper on her desk, “I hate to change the subject,” she said, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. Her calculated, slow voice must be in her own design principles for special education. Except now she had already broken rule one, which is probably don’t be abrupt with the autistic students. Not a bad rule, for me at least. That is, if she would’ve followed it. “You seemed to be struggling with...English back at your school in Orlando. You’re also not doing particularly well in Biology, and I don’t want you to lose your honors status on that.”
I rolled my eyes, annoyed where this was going.
“Perhaps let’s focus on a few goals at a time. Do you mind if we write down some of your goals for the school year?”
“Dean’s Merit Society,” I stated flatly. I was annoyed she had prompted this conversation at this point.
“Well…” Mrs. Johnson fumbled through some papers and pulled out a calculator. In such a relatively high-tech school, I didn’t understand why she subscribed to using so much traditional paper as she did. Her desk was messier than mine back home in my room. “You’ll need a 90% average by midterms to be eligible here at West… We weigh your West scores at 150%, so that would mean you need a…92 this semester. You’re close!”
I cringed. She exclaimed a bit too “sing-songy” voice of surprise when she realized my scores weren’t that far off. I never understood why people were so surprised that my scores were decent in school. I was very high achieving in some subjects and low achieving in others. Of course, people like Mrs. Johnson tend to mostly focus on the low-achieving scores. I wondered if I’d be better off if my strengths were simply more cultivated to a passionate and elite level, rather than bringing up my weakness to average or even below. For example, what if I had more time to cultivate my skills in computer science? Or statistics? Rather than scrutinizing my weaknesses in a few other subjects.
“You’re going to need to bump up your grades much higher. Gee, looks like this English class you’re in is a bit tough,” she sympathized. “Essay-based this time. Looks like three essays in the first marking period alone. Wow,” she said, rummaging through her pages again. “A midterm by the end of the second marking period too? Gosh. They usually skew more literature-based for sophomores. Although the two are intertwined of course… So you really should read too… Do you want me to show you some books?”
“No thanks. Not right now.”
Her digressions are way too strong, it’s way too sudden. I cracked a smile thinking about how she had broken her design principle yet again.
“So anyway, dear, let’s tailor your focus to this Dean’s Merit Society goal. It’s very achievable. You just need to pull your science and English grades above or extremely close to 90%. You seem to do outstanding on electives. So just score a 96% or higher on stats and computer science, and then cruise.” She pulsated her hands to mirror the ocean waves here. “With a 92% on math, or whatever combination you want. I’m sure you can figure it out. Do you want to go over your weaknesses another time?”
“Sure,” I said, noting to myself to never remind her. “But I want to do this all while I start the organization,” I restated. “I can do both.”
Mrs. Johnson shifted in her seat. “Noa, dear. You have an 80% in English right now, and you didn’t scratch above an 82% in your first year.”
“That’s because my teacher was—”
She patiently raised her hand to stop me as if she had heard it all. My cheeks became hot.
“After all, school organizations are really important for your social life, I know. But let’s be cautious about single-handedly leading a new organization. It’s an important one, don’t get me wrong. Which means you need to handle it with care. We don’t want the organization to have to go to the wayside if your grades drop below your standards.”
“But I don’t have to lead it myself. I can find co-leaders, co-founders. I need to anyway for the leadership experience. My guidance counselor from Orlando is writing the letter of recommendation,” I suggested, trying hard to conceal obvious signs of a plea.
Mrs. Johnson spent some time lecturing me of other autistic organizations for teens around town and began to list a few. “Besides, there aren’t that many autistic kids in any given school.”
“They don’t have to be autistic,” I interrupted. “I wasn’t even autistic until a few months ago. They can be anything. The other students just have to feel or be different to join. I can even lead sessions to talk about some traits and see if anybody else relates.”
Mrs. Johnson put her hand to her shoulder and smiled, considering.
“So you need this for Ms. Smith to write your letter of recommendation, huh?”
“Yes, but I also just want to find more Samuels,” I added. She looked at me confused. I didn’t bother to explain from the beginning, but I did say, “I mean, Samuel as in another person out there who’s just like me. There’s gotta be others. I know there are. Just tell me who declared autism, and I will reach out.”
Her face softened here. Perhaps she felt sympathy for me needing more students like me to belong in this school. I no longer wanted to be the odd girl, the cure for racism. I wanted to be Noa, Noa with the cute afro even. Whatever it took to make life here slightly easier before I could finally move far away after I graduated. Plain and simple.
Mrs. Johnson lectured me once more on the logistics of reaching out to other students. She’d have to ask for both the parents’ and the students’ permission.
“As your parents would know, not everyone with children with disabilities wants to enroll their students in even more activities.”
I shook my head in confusion. My parents were delighted I was in the clubs I was in. She ignored my look of skepticism.
“I’ll reach out to the ones at West, and maybe others around the district,” she said, now winking. Others around the district? Maybe Mrs. Johnson liked the idea too. “I’d be happy to be the advisor for the organization.”
I couldn’t contain my happiness. I felt like I was going to leap out of my own body.
“One more thing though,” she said. “Since you need this for the Dean’s Merit Society, I will have the other students send anonymous progress reports at random on your leadership potential. They will be instructed to not notify you when they receive them, and their results would go to both me and Ms. Smith back in Orlando. So, you need to be a great conflict manager and make sure the others are happy and know that you are genuinely interested in them all.”
I agreed. Whatever it took to get into Dean’s Merit was all I needed. I wanted to thank her for the consideration, but the phrase “rocks and pebbles” leaped out of my mouth instead. Mrs. Johnson either didn’t hear or pretended not to. I wondered if she was back to dean mode. “How about you please finish your lunch, sweetheart. You haven’t touched anything other than the tater tots,” she said with concern. Confirming that she was back to dean mode. “While we’re doing that, let’s talk about this English baseline essay of yours due last Friday. You scored an 82 on it. Care to let me see your essay with your prompt?”
I allowed it. She started to pull a file up on her computer for once. Her desk was now a mess from all her papers. She didn’t check the time as she began to get sidetracked and sort through all of my hard copy files that she pulled out. I did, however. If I didn’t leave in the next two minutes, I’d be late for my US Government class. By the time Mrs. Johnson finished cleaning up my paper files and reading through my electronic essay, I had already finished my food, hurried out the door, and left for my next class.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I spent my time writing this essay after showing my aiSenses to the O’Brians. Our class wasn’t given much guidance on how to structure yet, as this was our baseline essay. Of course, I thought I sounded calm, cool, and collected. Below was my masterpiece:
English 10
Ms. MacMillian
Prompt: Using 800-1000 words, describe relatable aspects of a summer reading book to your life referencing a book you’ve recently read in your outside reading.
Reference: Twirling Naked in the Streets and No One Noticed
Jeannie Davide-Rivera
Word count: 800
My parents abruptly moved to this town. They knew they were moving but hadn’t picked where, as they were waiting for their job opportunities to sync. We didn’t have access to the summer reading list until I first moved to Petersburg about 20 days ago. So instead, this summer I created an algorithm to predict one of the books that would likely be on the summer reading list for my “future new school”. I did this using machine learning by funneling the top-selling young adult books and the old public list of classic books select schools of similar standing to my old school and West have used. I funneled through 50 public school lists in each of the 5 regions of the US, and one young adult New York Times bestselling list, all to predict my reading book due for marking period 1.
In short, my model was wrong. “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee came out on top with 91% confidence. So I read that and one other book. The other book wasn’t on the list, but a “book of your choice” came out with 74% confidence, so I took my chances and chose “Twirling Naked”.
Apart from learning the importance of putting quotes on book titles, I did gather a lot of insight from this memoir. The present book is about 200 pages. I also read “To Kill a Mockingbird” by the way, but I will disregard it for the context of this essay as I think Twirling Naked will do.
I’m already relating to this book as I type this paper. The author who wrote the book, Jeannie, also obsessively loved to type. She had peculiar behaviors as a child, and it went unnoticed at best and condemned at worst. Jeannie had a hard time fitting in at school and a hard time holding down jobs—jobs that she seemingly should be able to do just fine. While I’m still below working-age, this is relatable to me, as I often miss really easy questions in school. For example, last week in Global History during one of the teacher’s really inspiring philosophical rants, Mr. Davis asked me to name one historical tragedy in world history. Just one. Even though I knew the answer, I didn’t know the answer. My mind went blank and I ended up babbling about the brief history of the dodo bird, and how it was a tragedy that Homo Sapiens and other invasive species feasted on them before they even had a chance to thrive. Of course, I should have said something obvious, like slavery. Or a little less obvious, like colonization, or the war in Sierra Leone in the 1990s. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
I don’t know what I said that made everyone laugh. I never really cared for dodo birds, even though all the influencers and Orlando kids love them. And sloths. And koalas too. While I’ll admit koalas are adorable, I don’t get why people are obsessed with them, as they’re not relevant to us here because they only live in Australia.
When someone like Mr. Davis inputs a stimulus like a world tragedy question, I tend to output something irrelevant like Australia. Jeannie in “Twirling Naked” also had this problem.
Mr. Davis scolded me, snapped, and told me I shouldn’t be referencing the Ice Age on a serious topic.
When did I mention the Ice Age?
I imagined a computer code line going:
“If a student says something AND other children laugh THEN output: ICEAGE”.
