The Zoo

This piece is supposed to be from the Pov of a mentally handicapped ten year old. It was inspired by the book, the curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon, which is a novel as told by a fifteen year old autistic boy, and takes place in England. Really great book, really recommended. The depictions of some of the mental disorders referenced are probably inaccurate, sorry, my bad.


I’m in class “C” at school. They call us the zoo animals. It’s because we’re the special needs kids, and we’re loud and rowdy and uncontrollable. So far, we’ve gone through three teachers this year, the latest just assigns reading, and leaves the room. No one does the reading. I guess she’s scared she’ll break her arm like Ms. Spilner. People think we held her down and broke her arm, but that’s not true. She was walking around the room, yelling at us for hitting things like each other and ourselves, when she stepped on a back pack and slipped. After that she got moved to the B class for second graders. My school is organized into three different classes per grade. It is a small school. A class is for the best and brightest, the kids who would take all AP’s in a regular school. They say they will change the world, be the leaders of tomorrow. I don’t see how reading dead English playwrights will help, but what do I know? Class B are the average kids, working class. Their future would be to play a sport or work for class A kids. Then there is class C. we are the smallest, after class A. We are called the special needs kids, or the Zoo. They aren’t teaching us really, they just want to get rid of us. Here you will find the stupid, the beefy, and the just plain weird. I am here because I have dyslexia, which means I can’t spell. Or that’s what I understand. There’s other stuff too, that’s wrong with me. My parents hate that, and me, a little, because my older brother and sister were in class A. I’m the family freak, my cousin says. I don’t like him. My best friends are Manny and Lila. Manny is big, and very stupid, and likes to fight, but he only fights with boys. He broke Earl McGraw’s jaw once. With me and Lila, who are girls, Manny is very sweet. He gives us hugs and brings us flowers. He likes us to play with his hair. I like him because he loves me, but not like in the movies, but like a baby brother or a Labrador puppy, like Kiko, who died when he got bitten by a rattlesnake. Lila, my other best friend, is a girl. We get along, which is good, because there is only one other girl in my class and I don’t like her. Lila is short, but pretty. She is her because she has Aspberger’s syndrome, which is kind of like Denny’s autism, but not really. Denny sits at the back of the class and hates to be touched, or anything green. I like Denny because he always shares his candy and knows all the capitals in the world. Lila is more girly than me, and used to have a class B boyfriend. But I am smarted than her and I can run faster, so it’s ok. I am smarted because I can do Chemistry, which my sister taught me with her old books. When I get bored, I do electron configuration, which nobody in class understands. This makes me feel good. Another person I like in my class is JR. his name is John Rutherford, but everyone calls him JR. His birthday is the day right after mine, which means he’ll turn eleven 24 hours after me. He has ADHD, he means he doesn’t pay attention and has a lot of energy, but I like him because he tells me jokes and we fight, but its not like real fighting, it is like joke fighting, because we only sort of scratch each other and do tackles and things. Besides if he hurt me I’d hit him because even though he’s my age he is small and I’m stronger. I also like Ms. Mayberry, who taught us in first grade, because she was not mean to us, and we were nice to her. I read a lot, and we used to talk about books, and she used to share lollypops if we did math right. She still lends me books and I like her a lot so I buy her a box of lollypops for Christmas. People I do not like are people like Coach Burns. He teaches P.E. and I do not like him because he yells and makes us play volleyball, so I hate P.E. even though I am a good runner. Also, he calls kids in my class “retardo” and “spaz” so he is mean, and also he smells. Other people I don’t like are Cindy, the other girl in my class, who is here because she is below the learning level you need for class B, but she feels smarter and better than my friends and other people in my class so she hates us. I don’t like Chuck either. Chuck has Down syndrome, like Beau, but he is not nice like Beau, because he is mean and bites people. He pees on people and laughs, and eats things and he shouldn’t like plastic toys and smells like old yogurt. My class is loud and messy. It smells, almost everything is broken and people fight. We don’t learn anything, and the teachers and other students are scared of us. They call class room 8E the Zoo, or the Freak Show. It is my favorite place in the whole world.