Jason Visenberg

My son has started kindergarten and being in that environment made me think back to my elementary school days. There’s something about a public school auditorium that feels the same no matter where you went to school — the tiny chairs, the faint smell of crayons, that weird echo. The one thing that still lives rent-free in my head is this story about taking the “Gifted” test and what happened after it all. Obviously, every parent thinks their kid is gifted. I mean… it’s my kid, of course he’s a cut above — that’s just parenting math

Let me set the scene: The year is 1994. In my trunk is raw… sorry, sometimes I get myself and Jay-Z confused (I’m JV after all). It’s a very normal day in the Toronto suburb of Thornhill. I’m in 3rd grade and everybody is about to take a test, not for school itself but to determine if you are “gifted” or not. For the other 99% of kids that basically makes us lumps of coal.

I’ve always wanted to feel special, to stand out. Maybe that’s why I got into stand-up comedy. So part of me was thinking, wouldn’t it be cool if I was gifted? Like, wouldn’t that be a plot twist? I wasn’t wrong about me, you all were wrong about me! Finally, a test that sees my genius! Isn’t that the whole point of standardized testing, to make you feel like you’re truly special and not just another brick in the wall?

So we get the test booklet and get to work. It starts with some math problems, then moves into verbal stuff, and then some pattern recognition or whatever. A lot of it is multiple choice, which to me just meant the answer was already there. I start ripping through it, boom, bang, boom, it doesn’t seem that hard. It’s a long test, but I’m flying, questions getting answered, momentum building. I finish the last one, look around the room like, yep, record time, close the book, and do what I do best in these situations: space out. Do they give a prize for first to finish? It felt like running a 4.2 forty-yard dash at the NFL Combine, except no one was timing me and well, clearly I wasn’t getting drafted.

At recess, kids are buzzing about the test. That’s when one girl casually says, “Yeah, it was crazy how all of the answers were in the back of the book.”

Wait. WHAT?

Turns out the actual answers were sitting right there the whole time. The gift was… knowing where to look!

I think her name was Adriana. Adriana was perfectly average. Not a troublemaker, not a standout, just sort of there. We had kids who were obviously the top of the class and she wasn’t one of them, at least not in a way anyone noticed. And yet she’s the one who goes off at the end of the year to the school with the gifted program. I never saw her again. Adriana, if you’re reading this, I’d love to know where life took you.

Here’s what stuck with me, though: you don’t need a test to tell you what makes you unique. Believe in yourself! Even if your talents are wildly specific or seemingly useless, like knowing every Oregon Ducks uniform combo since 1996, quoting classic Simpsons episodes, having an encyclopedic knowledge of basketball, or being able to connect any real-life situation to a specific episode of Seinfeld, there’s value in owning what makes you different.

And that’s what I hope my son learns in school: that being “gifted” isn’t about labels, programs, or hidden answer keys, it’s about leaning into whatever makes you uniquely you!

There’s a line from a song that sums this all up for me. It’s from I’m So Humble by the great pop star Conner 4 Real: “Being gracious is my weakness. People say I’m so unpretentious… for a genius.”