Post by Harold James Greyson on Mar 3, 2011 18:23:46 GMT -7
HAROLD JAMES GREYSON
"Mathematics is the world's best game. It is more absorbing than chess, more of a gamble than poker, and lasts longer than Monopoly."
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I AM BEYOND GOD
[/font]I AM HUMAN
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Full Name: Harold James Greyson
Nickname(s): Nope.
Gender: Male
Age: seventeen
Birthdate: coming
Sexuality: Straight
Reincarnate: Nope
I am: N/A
Played By: Drew Roy
Grade: Senior
Boarding: Boarding
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OUR SHINING FUTURE
[/font]IN REVOLT
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Height: 5'10"
Weight: 170
Eye Color: Brownish-Green
Hair Color: Brown
Build: The guy is built like an ox. He looks powerful and he is, the only exception being slightly narrow shoulders.
Scars: Some here and there, none worth noting except for a slash mark on his left arm.
Piercings/Tattoos: Nope.
Personal Style: Harold's typical style is muted and invariant. He will wear the same T-shirt for up to a week and a half on end because it's the closest in reach or he just...wants to. Black T-shirts are a staple, as well as grey hoodies. He'll wear bright colors every so often, but those are mostly blues and greens, and all dark in hue. He isn't sad, he just prefers it. Graphic T's and long sleeved shirts do happen on occasion. He wears jeans all the time, too, in varying states of wear and tear. Harold's shoes are most often worn; he wears them until they get holes in the bottoms. Harold looks a bit rag-tag all around, but not like a street rat or something.
Appearance: A little bit of mess and a smile. That would be Harold in a nutshell. He had messy brown hair that he does comb, but somehow ends up rumpled by the end of the day. Her clothes are a bit rag-tag, and sometimes a little too big or two small, but he doesn't seem to mind what he's wearing. He does, however, appear to be smaller than he is. Harold might have broad shoulders and be built like a boxer, but he doesn't show up a lot. He'd typically looking at the floor or blankly ahead, rarely looking at anyone for long and certainly not if they look at him. He blends in, in short.
If he is picked out in a crowd, he'd often picked out due to tripping or stumbling or the like. He shuffles along, and drags his feet most of the time, resulting in trips and stumbles and brushing or hitting corners. He'd be pointed out for slouching or scooting around at the edge of a crowd. Despite his want to blend in, he can very very expressive, without knowing it. He'd quick to smile, or, conversely, cry, shout, or laugh among people he knows or is trying to make conversation with, or even just watching things happen to people, his face is an easy book to read sometimes. When he'd confused, however, all expressions go away and he may as well have been hewn from stone.
HOPE AND HORROR
[/font]MIXED IN BLOOD[/size][/center]
Likes: All branches of mathematics (particularly calculus and geometry), the string theory, ice cream, hide-and seek, children, playdoh, lego, simple games, blues and greens, swimming, holding a successful conversation, listening to music, doing math, lining things up, helping people, veggie tales, fuzzy/fluffy objects, smooth stones, fall, Buddy, frogs, popcorn, swing sets, snow, and silence.
Dislikes: Being stared at, laughter (a lot of the time), English, reading, writing, history, politics, even minor minor amounts of pain, music that's too loud, biology, fish, being asked if he's okay, crowded buses/subways/hallways that he can't find space in, roller coasters, anyone disturbing his lego, tripping, being told anything slowly, doctors, tests, shouting, sudden loud sounds and strange foods - which there means "new", until he's seen it around for months.
Dreams: Getting a mathematics degree, living independently, and working with kids.
Fears: Sudden loud sounds, shouting, sometimes laughter, being unable to care for himself, failing in math, being given up on, people sometimes, and probably most of all, his parents.
Habits/Hobbies: Doing math, stacking/lining things up, making weird shapes out of lego and play doh, wandering, listening to the same song on repeat, or playing poker.
Secret(s): He can count cards like nobody's business.
Personality: Harold 's a strange one. He's agreeable, thoughtful (though execution of said thoughts varies from just fine to a train wreck) takes things literally, and has a strange sort of genius. He looks like a typical teen but he doesn't think like one, that's for sure...not a lot of your typical teens are autistic, after all.
What, typically, he is, is a reserved, awkward-looking you man. He blends in but if one watches him - really watches him - you'd note the fact he rarely make eye contact, or that he might always be heading for the most open area, or that he might be counting something. Counting and mathematics are a large portion of Harold's life. He's a stellar mathematician in his own right. Like many autistic souls, he gravitates to a few things far more than anything else; geometry and calculus being his favorite mathematical pastimes. Of course, having savant skills probably helps. Harold does best with calendar dates and lighting-speed calculations, but he also has some scary memorization skills; he rarely puts it to use, though, unless he's counting cards.
Which brings us to the fun and games. Most of the time - poker being the main exception-, Harold hates overly complex games. He liked simple games like tag, or hide-and-seek, games that have a short life of rules and aren't exceptionally demanding physically (ie, hockey), or require him to learn more complex rules than he has to. Mildly ironic, considering the complex rules of math, but rules that don't have a mathematical proof to him go out the window. So do most things. Harold has a hard time expressing anything "abstract" to people. He likes to hold conversations with people he's gotten to know, but he can't remember typical conventions or topics with most people; his peers and those older than him most notably. With children, Harold is at his best. He is more at ease around those below fourth grade, finding them not as hard to talk to, impress, and certainly he has no fear of them. He's much more confident around the young than a teenager, due to bullying, which brought his confidence down to roughly a zero.
Despite the low confidence, though, he has the willpower of a wild dog. He will keep plodding on through life and he will see the bright side. He's always willing to give people a second chance, and if it doesn't turn out, a third...or thirteenth. He's more likely to blame himself for the failing than the other, and he will keep on doing it, occasionally leading him to be used tremendously. Harold rarely reaches a breaking point with others to the point where he'll tell someone to get lost, provided they aren't helping him out of pity...if he realizes that, he will typically throw heavy objects at someone, and he's pretty strong, though neither fast nor graceful. More often, he takes something literally and gets upset, but it's just as easy to make him happy again.
On the outset, Harold appears two dimensional; really quite simple to manipulate, if not predict, and very black and white, but he is far from it, if given the chance to work out exactly what the world means, which can sometimes feel to him like trying to find the last digit of pi - impossible.
PRETTY BOY, PRETTY GIRL
[/font]PRETTY INSANE[/size][/center]
Mother: Candice Bobbie Greyson, 46, civil engineer
Father: Edmund Finn Greyson, 46, school custodian
Siblings: None
Other: No family members, no.
Pets: Nope.
Hometown: Intercourse, Pennsylvania
History:
A janitor and a civil engineer. And unlikely duo, if there ever was one. But this is not the story of Candice and Edmund, it is the story of their son, Harold James Greyson.
He was born screaming, as most children are, but screaming to the point where his parents thought he might be in pain. Turns out, he wasn't. Turns out,he was just warning them.
Harold was never an involved child. He didn't really play with toys. He clung to them, and moved them, but he didn't laugh, he didn't cry, he just watched. In fact, there was very little Harold appeared to enjoy. He didn't respond much to being hugged, he didn't say anything, he was...was. Candice and Edmund were first-time parents, but they knew this couldn't be right. And that was correct. At the age of three, Harold was just not developing right at all. He was diagnosed with autism rather quickly, but his parents were tough. They weren't going to let that stand in the way of their son. Oh no; they had the will of hungry dogs and they were going to give Harold his shot at things.
It all starts out in a great scenario, doesn't it?
Well.
It starts out that way.
But hungry dogs eventually do starve.
Back to things.
His parents managed to find time to always be with their young son. They made sure they played with him, exaggerated emotions, did everything they could to help him. They cared. A lot. And Harold did respond. He began to play, and not just line up his toys. He talked a little - at three and a half he had verbal skills of a much younger child, but he began to reach out to the world around him. His parents were thrilled, and when it came time for him to go to preschool, they brought him there, telling the teacher what was up, and left in confidence. It would be more work, they thought. But they'd do it.
The first day of preschool was a mess. He cried and screamed, terrified by the other children. The first week was a mess, the first three months were a mess, the first six months were. But, he did get better. He did start to play blocks with a few kids, who let him stack, and then he played trains, and started to talk a little more. He even drew a picture for his mother, which still hangs sadly on the fridge to this day. A big yellow circle with lots of blue and orange squiggles and a black line to be the ground. The sun in the sky over a black line - the world.
Kindergarten game about, and life went on. He was still behind his peers, his parents still did all they could, but it was hard on them. As soon as first grade rolled around, they enrolled him in tutoring things, to socialize him further, and allow them to rest.
Tutoring. At six, Harold was sent into a room, which had many desks, three kids to a tutor. There were six desks, but that seemed like a lot at the time, for the too-tall, blank faced Harold. They tried to make him smile, and tried to get him to read, but the only thing that really got Harold was math. It was like he knew it. He just knew how numbers worked. He knew how dates worked. He knew how it all worked and he loved it. Mental math was a breeze; he took the older kids work and did it on the sly, multiplication, division, the more he did the more he liked it.
Things went well for a time. Harold made progress. His parents could rest but at the same time, they did just want a normal son. It seemed a heartless thing, but it wasn't. They did care for Harold. It was just hard. Harold, however, made good progress. Not just this, but his little mathematical skill came right on out to be savant skill; he could figure out just about any equation in his head. It made math homework quick, and what was shoved in it's place? Reading.
By 4th grade, Harold was purposely going slow on his math to keep away from the intensive studies his parents laid out. One day, it made Edmund snap. He was at home with Harold one evening, trying to persuade him to heard. He was almost at his grade level! He kept trying, but Harold, being stubborn as an ox (and built like one) refused. Edmund snapped. He shouted he screamed and hit his son, who was terrified. Harold grabbed his shoes and was out the door. Thankfully, it was springtime. He didn't stop running to put on his shoes until he'd reached the end of the street, and then he kept running, into a park and away before Edmund could catch him. He spent the night running and hiding and deciding for certain that there was going to be a day where he was going to be such that no one would make him do stuff he didn't want to, that he would be independent. He returned the following morning like nothing ever happened. It was all good now.
To him, not his parents. He was screamed at. He was shouted, half out of exasperation, and half out of worry. Harold took it as anger. For weeks he didn't speak to his parents while resentment grew on both sides. Harold, in truth, was scared now. He'd always been sensitive, and he had been learning to control that, but his parents screaming at him had been terrifying to him. When he did next speak to his parents, he stuttered.
And that was the first time he did. His parents thought "okay, he's just recovering", but the new found stutter didn't stop. He lost friends he'd made, and was thrown into speech therapy, where, humiliated by his stutter and confused beyond reason, shut up. He looked as though he were going to cry with simple answers. His parents saw the mess they'd made, and gave it one last effort. They invited people over, they became social butterflies again (Harold had made it hard) but never made him speak or be spoken to. Every so often there was a success, he'd stammer something out to someone. But he didn't feel at all like he belonged.
Until Dad's poker night. Harold crept down past his bedtime, and was engrossed. Edmund wanted to make him go back to bed, but his friends argued to let the kid stay up for once. They won out, and before they knew it, Harold asked to play. He understood the game - and in that one night, beat the pants off a bunch of seasoned players. With the money he won, he got his teddy bear, Buddy. It took a couple more weeks for Edmund and his friends to realize Harold was counting cards and doing some intense probability theory in his head to trump them, and after they found this out, only let him play a few games with them, so they could have fun and play for money.
While gambling was prohibited at the middle school the seventh grader was in, Harold made some friends with the wrong crowd and played for a couple "friends". During seventh grade, he got used an abused. For the first while, he was oblivious to it. Then, slowly, he caught on. Harold never was stupid, he was just wired differently. And once he worked it out, he got mad. He grabbed one of the boys, Charles, by the collar and proceeded to beat him up. The resulting fight - Harold verses Charlie, James and Lance, was brutal. Harold was the strongest of the three boys, blindly angry, and had the element of surprise, but Lance was clever, quick, and in tenth grade. He also had a knife. He slashed open Harold's left arm, but then lost his nerve and ran.
It was Harold who called 9-1-1, for all of them. No charges were placed formally, on any of the boys, but all were expelled from school. Charlie ended up in the inner city, James eventually landed in juvvie, but clever Lance eventually ended up a hired hand for gangs in Manhattan. Go figure. And as for Harold?
His parents just...broke. The atmosphere of the house changed. They blamed each other, nearly filed for divorce and began to ignore Harold, sometimes only showing him things so he could be independent someday. Hungry dogs starved. He was re-enrolled into a school for "problem children" where he was even more scared and worried about taken advantage of. Confidence built up early on wore thin. His parents were at the end of their ropes. They never meant it with malice, but there was only so much that they too could handle. Harold was left to fend for himself in a school that he really didn't belong in. One of those schools for the fighting kids, for the skiz's, the sociopaths, the all around deranged. Harold, while by some standards "deranged" was positively normal and/or innocent and angelic compared to them, so he blended in; he got forgotten as the one kid who stayed in his bubble and didn't try to beat someone up over their lunch. He retreated into lands of lego and logarithms, and just...coping with life however he could.
Then came freshman year. He could have stayed there, but his parents knew he didn't belong in that sort of school. Not to mention, while Harold was struggling, his mother was meeting untold successes in her career. There was plenty of money to go around, and so they thought: Why not send him to a boarding school? It would not only be the reprieve they needed, but it would be the test if Harold could really make it without much higher stakes. Perfect, right? Even Harold wanted to go.
So, off he went, to a boarding school in PA. He lasted the year and only the year. Not for lack of trying but for the fact he got bullied massively, and the strict school just was too much of a leap for the sometimes forgetful boy. So they sent him to one in Oregon. That was was too relaxed. Harold did better - he dealt with his roommate well, he tried out for track and Field; but it was filled with kids that had made eighth grade hard. Nutjobs, in short. He didn't regress much, though. But he didn't make progress. All he learned was that no matter how optimistic you were, the world was a mean place sometimes. A mean, confusing strange place where numbers existed on a different plane for most people, but not him. He could have toughed it out at that school, but his parents didn't want him to end up in a situation like that with Charles, James and Lance again, so they shipped him to New York. That school was for the affluent - with a mother engineer that was one of the best in her field, Harold fit in okay. In that superficial way. But in every other superficial way, he was creamed. And no one got past the superficial stuttering, which regressed it some more. Harold wanted to go home, but he toughed it out. And he figured he would again, so he could prove it to his parents.
And he would have, too, if one of the teachers hadn't caught him crying one day, having a right breakdown. He bgged the science teacher not to tell, but, concerened for him, she did.
He got pulled out again; this time half way through the semester and put in an ordinary high school in Intercourse. His parents gave up. But Harold's didn't. He put his shabby reading and research skills to the ultimate test, and began to look for a boarding school to spend his senior year. He settled on Riverdale, a boarding school with a good reputation. He printed stuff off. He researched. He even wrote, in his childish printing, why he should go, and then placed it on his parents bed in May.
When they found it, well, how could they say no? The whole thing made them cry, if honesty is to be paid it's due. And so they sent him away. And damn it all, Harold would make it work.
I AM WHO I AM
[/font]WHO AM I?[/size][/center]
Name/Alias: I am Dante. I live in a pot.
Other Characters: Isabella Avadore, Iskander Azizi & Errol Murdock
Age: 17
Time Zone: Mountain
Post Sample:
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But...but...I made INE? D :- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
application format by dante/dante in ze pot. lyrics from 'wreak havoc' by angelspit. nothing will chase you down if you remove the credits, but i'd rather you not. that is all.
