Do You Like This Story
Thomas JohnstonRaised By Screens- Recovery class: complete body from an individual Wayback page capture - Original URL: https://thomasjohnston.substack.com/p/do-you-like-this-story - Wayback capture: https://web.archive.org/web/20240525201851/https://thomasjohnston.substack.com/p/do-you-like-this-story - Images and tracking pixels intentionally omitted.
I have a rare condition where direct human eye contact causes my face to break out in these terrible ugly hives, and eventually they come in through the throat, too, suffocating me, so if we lock eyes for long enough you’ll just fucking kill me.
But there’s a cure… when I was a kid they had me tested and apparently I can look at people in the eyes like this as long as it’s mediated through a screen. As long as it’s a video of a person, not a genuine face-to-face encounter. For some reason, this doesn’t trigger my condition.
This was right about the time when Google Glass first came out, so my parents and these physicians hooked me up with a beta version of the product, integrated into an ordinary pair of glasses, which would project a live stream video in front of my eyes, protecting me from these life threatening episodes of intimacy.
Eventually they stopped checking up on me or my condition, they just assumed that I was okay. Unbeknownst to them, I was still getting software updates remotely, so that the ‘record’ and ‘replay’ function on these glasses became available to me in my first year of high school…
So of course, I abused it. First it was watching YouTube during class and then it was creep shots of girls and eventually it was cheating on every test, even the SAT.
It wasn’t just the glasses, I also abused time zones. Back then they gave all the students in the nation the same exact test. Standardized. Fair. I lived in Hawaii, 6 hours behind Eastern Standard Time. So I was just waking up as neurotic New York prep schoolers finished their exam and immediately took to now-dead forum collegeconfidential.com to discuss their answers.
I was there waiting on the other side of the screen, recording every post of the discussion. So I went into the exam, literally, with a head full of answers. Months later my test came back 99th percentile. Mom cried tears of joy. I never told a soul.
—
I only got caught once, in Mr. Cushnie’s AP Statistics class, senior year. He noticed that my answers to a certain series of questions were identical to the answers on the study guide. The only way I could’ve gotten those answers was by copying. I was in my last semester of high school and really phoning it in, education-wise.
That morning, he casually requested that I stay after class. He says he knows I cheated. He doesn’t know how, he just knows I did. He can see it in my tired, guilty 17-year-old eyes. I’m bitter and scared — this was the final exam.
He understands that I must be under a lot of pressure, but cheating is no way to get ahead in life, and this behavior will come back to bite you eventually, so I’m going to have to give you a 0 for this exam, which will bring your grade in my class down to a C.
Unbeknownst to him, I had a perfect GPA and was on track to be the class Valedictorian. This C would remove me from that position. This is not happening.
He’s looking me deep in the eyes like a father. He knows this tough is love good for me in the long run, I’ll learn my lesson. He doesn’t know that there is something seriously wrong with me. With shaky hands I remove my glasses.
“Now, Thomas, I know— Oh my god, are you okay? Oh my god, Thomas, hey, hey, what in the world… HEY!!!”
My face is crawling with what feels like rat-sized fire ants. My world goes red white and purple as Mr. Cushnie’s screams fade away.
I woke up in the school infirmary. I believe they called it the Health Room. Mr. Cushnie waived the exam. "Everybody makes mistakes. I've never seen anything like that, Thomas. You must be under intense stress, some kind of panic disorder. Do your parents know about this?”