Thank you for giving me a forum to express these thoughts today. I openly invite you to post this on your organization website or to distribute it as necessary to further the understanding of this subject. Please feel free to encourage everyone to respond directly to me if they have any questions regarding anything I've said.

When I was 14, I wrote a little epigrammatic poem for the Atlanta Village Writers Group:

"Once there was a young girl
Who had great potential.
Now there is an old woman
Who had great potential."

I'm 31 now, and my fiance, Greg, is 22. Yesterday was his first day of college, at the Art Institute of Houston. His first class was Psychology. In his textbook, the authors assert that psychology has *proved* that gifted children are not less well adjusted than other children; that this is a misperception based on preconceived and "common sense" notions. We were so furious that he was silent with disgust for the rest of the evening and I actually cried. Let me take a moment to tell you why this hit us so hard.

Greg and I both fit a profile we think of as the "gifted dropout." You'll recognize this. Neither of us has been diagnosed with ADHD (but then again, we've never been evaluated). But we are the stuff of your parent membership's worst nightmares.

Greg has always been inquisitive and intellectually aggressive, a constant and diverse reader; unfortunately his family was always poor, and because of immense frustration due to a lack of proper resources and recognition of his gifted status, he dropped out of high school at 16. His GED scores (tested two years ago) happened to be exceptional. He is always surprising me with his cogent understanding of philosophy. He can learn any subject that interests him practically instantaneously. This includes his proficiency with computer animation, which he has taught himself to a professional level (the art school serves the purpose of giving him a piece of paper he's already earned).

I waited till I was in college to drop out. In the years since, I've been in a very abusive relationship, got pregnant out of wedlock (and don't have my child now), found and lost meaningless job after meaningless job, and basically sold my soul at a discount to anyone who looked interested. Thankfully, I was never a drunk or on drugs, though my self-esteem was so low it amounted to major depression (noone seemed to notice). But I learned to read literally before I could talk (demonstrably reading at 2 1/2, talking beginning with complete sentences at 4) and started playing the piano at 4 (they thought it would help my linguistic development). My IQ has been objectively measured at 162. I describe this to people in the following way:

"It's as difficult for a person with an IQ of 162 to relate to a person with an IQ of 100 as it is for the 100 to relate to a 38."

Think about it. . . .

You've never heard of us, have you? You've never seen one single thing we've produced; you've never heard one song I've composed, or seen one single animated image Greg's designed, or read any of our views (till now); you've never even read about us as case studies. Yet we were supposed to be the best and brightest.

Don't underestimate our frustration. I was on Zoloft briefly a few months ago for suicidal depression, before I met Greg. Greg subsided into apathy for over two years. We have no friends but each other. If you remember the case of the little boy who has to find a friend like himself out of a hundred "normal" kids, can you imagine the case of a grown couple trying to find other couples who match their intellectual predilections? The odds against the two of us ever having met are so high they make us shudder. By the way, we met in an online chat room. We would never, never have met otherwise.

Let me take the opportunity right now to ask those who are coming out against online access for gifted kids (based on so-called "addiction") if they have any viable alternatives; if they can provide a better and more readily accessible source of food for the intellect and access to like-minded people, I'd love to see it demonstrated. Otherwise, they can just shut up.

I run a channel on the Undernet, #Parnassus, that is dedicated to the nurturance of gifted teens. It didn't start that way. It was intended to be my own philosophical debate channel. But I attracted a bunch of smart kids, and there is none of the rancor, rebelliousness, or prurient idiocy that exists in the other teen channels. One of "my kids" is homeschooled, one is a very talented poet, one is a scarily adept hacker, the rest are various combinations of artistic and analytical; all of them are drowning to one degree or another. I love each and every one of them. They made my channel a place where I could alleviate my own frustration at being disenfranchised as a teen. (I should perhaps mention, in case you were wondering, that parents are always welcome to drop in. Our place is too precious to make vulnerable to charges of exploitation or abuse.)

So, anyway, here I am. I promised God and everyone that no teens I could help personally were going to have to find themselves in the same dead end I found myself in when I was that age. I've taken steps to save as many as I can reach.

But what about me? What about Greg? Who cares about us? Like Harrison Bergeron, we're draped in so many psychological and societal chains we can't move without pain. Are we going to just be thrown away like rotting and overripe fruit because it's too late to reclaim us? Where are the resources that can help us repair the damage of half a lifetime and set our feet back on the way? How can we *finally* realize our *potential*? Potential. Even saying the word makes me choke back a wave of nausea and tears.

I apologize for the length of this letter. Consider it a long-suppressed scream. While you're nurturing the gifted children of today and admiring them for their vast potential, why don't you spare a moment's thought for yesterday's gifted children whose hands are empty of worthy work and who have no hope of achieving anything better in their lifetimes?

Thank you very much. . . .

Sasha Albertini
:) Peace
(this essay dedicated to Robert M. Pirsig)