As a child, Omar had been diagnosed with a mild form of Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). This is a behavioral disorder where each entry in its list of symptoms is typically followed by the phrase, “towards figures of authorities, like parents or teachers.” In its full form, individuals with ODD are known to respond, “very poorly,” to directives, commands, and requests telling them to do something, especially when told by an authority figure. They are also often quick to anger, perpetually irritable, and tend to lash out at people in arbitrary acts of non-violent aggression and other forms of passive-aggressive behavior.

However, Omar's case was not entirely typical.

In the sixth grade, Omar had been briefly placed in a special education class in what he thought was a temporary situation. It wasn't long after his arrival that he asked his teacher, “How long do I have to be here? I want to go back to my normal class. When do I get to go back to my normal class?” in quick succession. Even in the sixth grade, he was still a precocious and somewhat whiny child.

It wasn't unusual for special education students to complain about the special education program, and so, all involved faculty members were instructed to use the same goto response. “Well,” she began, “probably when you graduate from high school.”

“But high school is over there!” he said indignantly, while pointing towards a corner of the room that a janitor was cleaning.

The high school was indeed where he pointed, plus several miles. He at least had a very good sense of direction.

“That's a different building! What if, when I go to high school, I say that I don't want to be in special ed anymore?”

“Well, you'll still have to be in special education,” she said, before she realized who she was speaking with.

He was new to the class, and she was in over her head.

“I mean, they might say that if you didn't make the most of your time here by slacking off, or if you still had ‘attitude issues,’ like that ‘temper’ of yours. It's just like the doctor said, if you work hard … ,” and so she went with her rather thoughtful response.

To the then eleven-year-old Omar, the question he asked had been rhetorical. As far as he knew, the conversation ended when he himself finished talking, which meant that he wasn't listening to his teacher's child-friendly explanation of the diagnostic criteria for ODD. At least, not consciously.

“I bet this has to do with what the doctor said,” he thought to himself. “And he said something about … what was it,” but he struggled to remember his conversation with the doctor. He was still rather displeased at the way the doctor had tricked him into playing those stupid games. “It's too loud here,” he decided, holding his little chin thoughtfully, as he walked back to his desk.

Omar saw his placement in special education as being some sort of punishment that he had just now learned was permanent. In his mind, he was always being singled out and punished whenever he refused to do something unfair that no one else had to do. He believed that they wanted to break him and force him to act like they do, so that he would think like them as well. “There's no way,” he thought, “that I'll ever become a miserable mindless drone!”

It irritated him to no end when they'd say, “This is for your own good … ,” or “We're trying to help you … ,” and then claim that they didn't want him to “become a bad person.” However, it was when they said things like, “We know what's best for you,” that he realized how blind they were. To Omar, the worst sort of person is the one who thinks they know what's best for everyone. He thought this was obvious, and that most people knew this.

Lately, he'd noticed the persecution had worsen, the punishments more severe, as evidenced by his current predicament. If he didn't put a stop to it now, then it would likely get even worse. In his own words, he had to, “fight back smarter, not harder,” and then, against those who would do him wrong, he had to—and he thought that this last part was rather clever—“defeat them before they knew that the battle had even begun.” However, to actually do this, he had to outthink them, and so he began to hatch a plan.

From his teacher's perspective, Omar suddenly turned around and began walking away in the middle of their conversation. “What the … ,” she began saying quietly to herself. However, being a trained professional, Omar's teacher quickly adapted to the situation and readily accepted that, for whatever reason, this child was now calmly walking back to his seat. “I think I dodged a bullet there,” she thought. “I'll just let that be.”

She watched him sit down and then, after a minute, she saw the most devilish smile that she had ever seen. “Lord, have mercy on us,” she prayed quietly to herself. “Amen.”

Meanwhile, young Omar had already begun to recall parts of the conversation with his psychiatrist by the time he sat down. “He kept saying that my attitude was agreeable and disagreeable, but sometimes more disagreeable … and, uh, something about how I sometimes lose my temper? … Oh yeah, and that's anger management.” He nodded as he remembered each detail. “I think he said that I ‘need to work on having a more agreeable attitude’ and that I ‘need to learn to control my temper.’ ” Even in his own mind, Omar's psychiatrist sounded like a cultured idiot, but in a way that wasn't maliciously mocking. The tone he used was simply what he honestly thought he remembered hearing.

Omar began stroking his chin again as he tried to understand what that really meant. “I bet I just need to be polite, and to say yes to everything, and all of that good-boy crap.” He started smiling. “Yesss. … I'll do that for awhile. … Be nice to people, and for dumb-ass crazy people, I should probably be extra—what's that word—uhm, not ‘nice’ but ‘Respectful’! Yeah, that's it.” By now, his smile went from “devilishly wicked” to “outright satanic.”

A multitude of different plans, strategies, and tactics went through his head, and they were so numerous that he could barely think of them. He wasn't entirely certain what the difference was between strategies and tactics, since they sounded like the same thing, but he made a note to himself to figure that out later. More importantly, he knew that it won't be easy for him, and that things wouldn't suddenly change overnight. In this, he'd learn that the former was an understatement, while the later was almost entirely wrong, plus or minus a few weeks.

“Play the long game, Omar,” he thought to himself. “I'm young, and they're old. I'll outlive them. All I have to do is just wait them out.” Realistically, he made another note to himself to reevaluate his progress every other year or so.

For now, he had to focus on damage control, and so he set a goal for himself. “In a few years, if I could just get retested, they'll think I ‘grew out of it,’ or better yet, that it was all just a big misunderstanding.”

⁂

Throughout Omar's machinations, the special education classroom was awash with activity. Along the periphery of the classroom, several groups of children were clustered around special “project stations” where they stood doing various special things. Of all the children, only Omar was seated, and he sat seemingly alone in the center of a sea of empty desks.

No one was paying any attention to Omar, except for the teacher he had been speaking to, who was at the moment considering a different vocation, and one other boy who also happened to see Omar's deeply disturbing smile. This other boy was the “tire fire kid,” who had a criminal record for “starting fires and slashing tires.”

The “tire fire kid,” who had been kept back a year, said quietly to himself, “That's one of those dumb-ass crazy people. I better stay away from that!”

At the time, he had been assessing whether the new kid would be a suitable “playmate.” In the following days when Omar's personality drastically changed, the “tire fire kid,” whose moniker eventually became, the “pet murderer,” decided that Omar was clearly a psychopath.

“Dodged a bullet there,” he had thought, about a month later. By then Omar had been removed from the special education program and placed back in the general student population. “That one's a lost cause. Defffinitely! And I bet they decided to use him to set an example.”

⁂

At home, a week after Omar began enacting his plan, his parents began to think that something was horribly wrong with their son when his personality suddenly changed. After a month, they brought him back to the same psychiatrist for additional testing, due to their concerns that he might have a personality disorder.

This new round of testing was much longer, and had to be split into multiple sessions. On the first day, just as the doctor was about to begin, Omar said, “Oh goodie! Do I get to play those games again?” It wasn't really a question, but while he said this he clapped, much like a four-year-old would do. “Can I play those games for real now, or do I still have to pretend?”

“What do you mean?” the doctor asked.

“Oh, I just did it in the funny way, but not the honest way, you know?”

“Ah, yes. Well, just do your best. Answer the questions honestly, and try to solve the puzzles as fast as you can.”

“Oh, Okay!” his fake cheer was slightly infectious. “There were so many games that were all different. It was confusing, like I didn't know what I was doing. Right?”

The doctor nodded politely, and young Omar did the same, but with more enthusiasm and a big smile.

“Oh my god! Being good is so exhausting,” he thought to himself, carefully, so as to not slip out of character. “Smiling all the time feels weird. Maybe I should just stay away from people more. Yeah, if this works, that will be my reward.”

After the testing concluded, the psychiatrist, who had been staying up late to analyze Omar's results, spent the entire night writing a preliminary report. The testing was already done, so he used the last day to double check his findings and report his results to Omar's parents. “Your boy is a genius!” he said in hushed tones, in an otherwise empty waiting room. “His hand-eye coordination and general reflexes are simply amazing. Truly impressive.” The psychiatrist was rather excited, but he still managed to present himself professionally.

Omar's parents noticed the flame of interest in the psychiatrist's bloodshot eyes. They were surprised he lasted that long.

“Based on my analysis, he's a very well-adjusted, honest, and conscientious child. Very agreeable, personality-wise, but just a tad immature for his age sometimes.”

Omar's mother, father, and soon-to-be former psychiatrist, all looked at the boy. He was quietly reading a magazine, or at least pretending to. Every few seconds he would change the page and occasionally he would nod absently.

“He just changed so suddenly. How do you explain that?” his mother asked, conspiratorially. She had heard that drastic personality changes were sometimes caused by brain tumors. Their pediatrician had laughed when she brought this up, but she felt relieved when the CAT scan came back normal. Still, something nagged at her in the back of her mind, but she hadn't allowed her self to think of it, until now. “Do you think it's permanent?”

“My coworker said that some of his kids changed drastically, but in a bad way, around this age,” his father said. “Is that what happened here … but maybe with an inverted outcome?”

“I have some theories about that, actually,” the psychiatrist said excitedly. “At times, he would show signs of weariness and then his performance would change significantly. When that happened, the results were more in line with what I saw in the original round of testing. I tried to break more frequently, though all he wanted to do was lay down on the couch. Afterwards, he'd be back to normal.” There was no emphasis on the word “normal,” but his parents heard it loud and clear.

Then, it was as if the dams had burst.

“So, if we just let him rest more, then he'll always be like this?” his mother asked, hopefully.

The psychiatrist nodded once in a professionally noncommittal manner. Then, he added helpfully, “Actually, he did tell me that he thinks he needs to spend more time by himself.”

“‘More alone time,’ huh … ,” his father muttered. Turning to his wife he said, “He has been asking for his own computer.”

“I think that would be a great idea!” the psychiatrist interjected.

“Then, he'll always be like this?” she asked insistently, the eagerness and hope was evident in her response.

“Yes, well … ,” the psychiatrist said, somewhat nervously while trying to avoid over promising. “That would be my opinion. … Speaking of which, I was actually going to write a—”

“Thank God!” his father said, a bit too loudly. He glanced over at Omar who was now on the floor playing with a game designed for children half his age.

“Praise the lord,” her mother added, but in hushed tones. She attempted to make the sign of the cross in the way she'd seen catholics do, but ended up doing it incorrectly. Neither of Omar's parents were religious in the slightest.

On their way home, they spent over $3,000 purchasing a new computer and several gaming console systems. It was more money than they had at the time, and they felt it over the following months, but they never regretted it.

That night, Omar did not have to feign an enthusiastic smile. However, in later years, he would recall the shopping spree as being a bitter-sweet moment in his life. His parents, on the other hand, were amazed at how mature he acted while they shopped.

“I was just joking about needing a Nintendo for my homework, but they actually went and got me one,” he thought to himself, on the way home. “I was never sure before, but I guess it's undeniable. My parents are dumb-ass crazy people.”

In actuality, Omar's behavior while shopping was just his attempt at being “extra respectful.”