Maybe you clap the hand against your foot.

I would say our road trip to Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, New Jersey was good. Good in the somewhat interesting, we found food, and Janet the GPS did yeoman duty sense of good. The college visit itself has derailed me into all sorts of side ruminations about Gabe, college fit, and what the heck we should do with the kid.

(As an aside, I will say that I’m never so happy to see my bed as when I’ve just spent the last night in a hotel. Not that the Holiday Inn Express was bad. It was fine. Good even. But the disorientation experienced by Jeff, who gets up at night, can’t find the bathroom, turns lights on, then can’t figure out how to get back in bed always means my sleep is pretty patchy. Threw into focus for me exactly why I don’t go out of my way to plan trips anymore. And the coffee was weak. But you’d expect that.)

But, back to Gabe. Answering the question What should Gabe do after high school? feels like a restatement of What is the sound of one hand clapping? Like trying to answer the koan, you must--in trying to answer the Gabe question--actually think of an answer where it appears none exists. Maybe you can throw away the koan as stupid, but you can’t throw away the kid. And here’s where the usual objections or words of counsel, from the well-meaning, hit the bricks and go splat.

Doesn’t the kid need to figure this out for himself? Well, yes, ideally. But this kid isn’t even motivated to do the usual things, like drive a car or, um, move, sometimes. As far as I can tell, he would, if left unattended, default to eating Honey Nut Joe’s O’s and finding intriguing new animes online. All day. All night. It might not ever occur to him that he was now out of high school and in need of a plan.

Maybe you’re just a control freak. Let’s get this straight, right now. I don’t want to control anyone. It is my greatest wish that each person control him/herself. But, like a medium-ranked canine which will assume alpha rank if there’s a vacuum, I am keenly aware that there are things in need of controlling and absolutely no one stepping up to the plate.

So maybe if he didn’t assume you’d take care of it, he’d step up himself. Voila. Exactly. It’s my only hope. Which is why the default thought that you can send an undermotivated kid to the community college for a couple years falls flat. Gabe must go somewhere else. Somewhere where it’s good and clear that I’m not there to back him up.

But I doubt if that place will be Fairleigh Dickinson. Of my many impressions, the one that has filtered out most strongly is that it is not a school of non-conforming odd-ducks. Gabe would be the marginalized figure he more or less was at Summit. Baltimore Lab, where almost everyone is uniquely weird, has been a refreshingly better fit. Hence, it is my latest line of thought that, like the ugly duckling and the swans, Gabe must be dropped amongst a freaky dorky weird collection of creative types in order to have a hope of finding the inspiration to be who he is.

Which leads me to Columbia College. The son of Gabe’s carpool driver/teacher, a Lab 12th grader, has discovered a most appealing atmosphere at this school of arts and media in...Chicago. Chicago? I said. That’s so far away! Indeed, it made no sense to me at all until I checked their web site, watched a couple of their videos, and was quickly awash in the remarkable realization that here was a school full of students who are--each in his/her way--as weird as Gabe. It was a crazy wake up call, which highlighted what a wrong environment FDU--with its girls in Ugg boots and baseball team boys--was for Gabe.

FDU has a great LD program. But here is, perhaps, the second most important take home point I took home from our FDU visit, and it was made by the counselor presenting the program to us. That is: Do not pick a school with the LD program--no matter how fine--as the primary focus. Pick the school first for whether it fits the kid. The program is icing. Nice icing, but icing.

Still--don’t worry mom--it is not my plan to send the kid to Chicago. (I may show him the video...but, seriously. Don’t worry.)
It is my plan though, to look for something that looks like that. Because, here’s the thing:
What do we know about Gabe? What has he put any effort into and what makes him proud? Here are a few things that come to mind: He likes...hypnotism, sleight of hand, moonwalking, weird right-brain cartooning, unicycling, the rare work of fiction or poetry he actually sits himself down to do, ideas and notions that drift in from somewhere left of left field. He needs focus, motivation, and inspiration. But he’s not going to get it by being the weird kid among preppies. But maybe, in a place where the arts of all sorts--drama, writing, game creation, storyboarding--are being performed by better-focused kids all around him...maybe in such an environment he will catch a glimpse of what he wants to be. And maybe I’m stupid. But maybe one hand can clap, I don’t know.