Reed was named for his maternal grandfather, which was unfortunate for the significance of his mother’s married name, Todd, and thereby Reed’s last. By the time his mother realized the phonetic articulation of the two together; after pulling Reed’s birth certificate from the file to register him for a social security card so she could apply for Aid to Families with Dependent Children, it was of course too late.
In retrospect, she wished she had traded his first name for his middle, Tiberius, as in James T. Kirk from Star Trek, who she loved intensely enough such that she fell immediately in love with Reed’s father who possessed a similar appearance, and was the first, and last man she ever knew in the biblical sense, and who disappeared not that much longer after the two became one flesh. Where he went, no one could really say. One day, he was there. The next day, he was not. In Reed’s early years, she explained, “Your father was an astronaut, and is exploring a galaxy far far away.” Later, she modified this to, “You’re father was lost in space, battling a ferocious alien species,” and by the time Reed understood that his father was not really an astronaut, she told him the truth during a rerun of “Where No Man has Gone Before,” with William Shatner.
The strategy his mother utilized to soften the harshness of the juxtaposition of Reed’s first and last name was the insertion of the ‘T’ between the first and last name to serve as a phonetic break. Unfortunately, this worked only through the Christmas break of second grade, for on the first day of class, on January 3rd of 1999, the new home room teacher who had just moved from Bismarck to the even more frigid Grand Forks, ND, took roll call.
“Reed Todd,” she called out in a loud voice when Reed’s turn came.
“ReedTodd?” Greg Stark yelled from the back. A brief silence ensued, then, also from the back but on the other side, Caspar Kuchenstien refined further, “ReedTard. Retard.”
The children started laughing, the new instructor horrified at what she had wrought by not inserting the T for Tiberius.
It was at that exact time, with guffaws, chuckles and the sounds of restless hyperactive children that Reed understood with absolute clarity the importance that his mother had assigned to his middle name, and especially the placement of his middle initial, ‘T’ between his first and last.
He further realized that the world was not necessarily a nice or good place, and that to make himself more remarkable than he already was was something best not done, so he did not.
In the years to come, Reed sat towards the front, always on the side, when not specifically assigned a seat, closest to the door. He was always the last one in and first one out, the most cowardly of soldiers on the battlefield, which was a close enough estimation of the public school system. He never volunteered an answer. He never raised his hand, and when he completed tests, he consistently scored 70%, plus or minus five, with enough variance to not arouse any suspicion of the reality that he knew the answer to every question of every test. In short, Reed was so consistently just below average that everyone assumed his name was, unfortunately, apt.
The following year, when his mother asked Reed what he wanted for Christmas, and he said, “a Nintendo,” she winced. “Anything else, sweety?” she asked again, and Reed understood immediately. He smiled and replied, “Ray Bradbury’s complete works would be nice. On Christmas Eve, under the tree, were two gifts for Reed in addition to the fur-lined gloves he had bought for his mother with his paper route money, one larger and not so heavy, one smaller, and quite rectangular and solid. The former proved to actually be a Nintendo. It was from his only uncle, a surgeon in Wisconsin whom he barely ever saw.
Before the week was out, Reed was transfigured. He became the elf-like boy known as Link, collected the eight fragments of the Triforce of Wisdom, and rescued Princess Zelda from Ganon. For the first time in his life, he experienced reward for what he was good at in a world where Reed Todd did not exist. He became a hero in the kingdom of Hyrule. Two days after that, after school, in the library, at the sole desktop PC for public use, he opened the Google search engine, which had been released the previous year, and queried How do computer games work?” That was the day he discovered C++, which was the first computer language he learned. It took him two weeks.
By the time Reed attended St. Mary’s High School five years later, friendless but very smart, if remarkably average, he understood that average wouldn’t be good enough.
At first, his math teacher, Mr. Houg, thought it simply good fortune that smiled on Reed when he turned in his first test, and perhaps an innate brightness for he had never asked a question in class, simply being a bland presence in the second row, closest to the door. After the second test, he enquired of the English teacher of Reed’s performance in her class and she shared an outcome similar to his own. “How come we didn’t know about this?” he asked her, but she only shrugged, “I have no idea. He came from a public school, for Chrissakes.”
Cindy sat also in the second row, not as close to the door, but close enough to be immediately adjacent to Reed, of which he was acutely and painfully aware, her presence a warmth next to him like a visible aura only he could see. He had loved her since the second grade yet had said nothing other than “Hi,” or “Bye,” or “Have a nice summer,” or “Christmas,” or whatever. He seemed to remember her voice as one of the ones laughing on that long-ago day when he discovered the world was not necessarily a nice or good place.
When Mr. Haug placed his final test on the desk at the end of the term, at the top was the only score he had ever received once beginning high school. 100%, an A. He quickly flipped it over.
“I saw it,” Cindy snickered.
“Oh.”
“They’re all like that,” she said. “You’re a genius.”
Reed didn’t know how to respond because he already knew this. He searched his mind for a response that would both convey his love for her, but at the same time not sound too abnormal. He failed.
“Not bad for ReedTodd,” was all he said.
“Reed T. Todd,” she clarified, reminding him of his mother. “What’s the ‘T’ stand for?”
“Tiberius.”
“Tiberius,” she repeated softly. “I love that name.”
Reed’s heart flipped upside down. It was hard to breathe. He felt as though he’d just completed a forty-yard dash outside during recess, if there had been a recess. His heart pounded ferociously.
“Um…” He searched for an appropriate response and settled on Act 2, scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet. “My bounty is as boundless as the sea,” Read said. “My love as deep. The more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite.”
Cindy laughed, and Reed’s heart sank, but then she reached her hand across the narrow space between them, placed it over his and whispered, “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged cupid painted blind.”
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