Page 16 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • June 20, 2012 of his time in school and at home with rather lurid computer games and cartoons which, in substance, encouraged him to distance himself from reality. The result was that, until late in the game, the one literary genre he liked was mythology. My hope for Wally is that he never gives up on himself, finds gainful employment with the help of his strongly supportive family, and eventually learns to enjoy reading. This is not a big reach from where he is now, based on the sort of spelling and knowledge of the world one encounters on the Web, especially with regard to politics. Most people who write responses to online news stories see the world as polarized between good guys and bad guys. Wally can analyze problems better than a lot of people even now. This is not a great challenge for him. Was my time spent with Wally a failure or a success? I think it was both. Wally did not get into Princeton, like my student from down the street, nor did he get his choice of three architectural and engineering schools, like his older brother. But the young woman who was accepted to Princeton had a different issue: No one in her family, or apparently on the faculty of the competitive high school she attended, knew enough about literature or American history to engage an IQ that is higher than my own. Smart people have issues with boredom. They are easily stultified, rather as a healthy athlete might be by having no dumbbells that weigh more than 10 pounds. She is now working on her second graduate degree after internships in international journalism and diplomacy. Three of my other students have been admitted to medical school, and one has already graduated. Three more have served as translators for articles published in national magazines. In perspective, I did not fail Wally, and Wally did not fail me. He went the distance, improved his performance, vastly improved his socialization skills, dealt with his anger issues, and became a full-fledged, worthwhile human being. Over the distance of three generations, I think I can also say he became a friend, just as Milo, and my researchers and translators did. Wally succeeded in one important aspect: He survived. I would never dream of commenting on individual cases, but a lot of the teen suicides that have become a heartbreaking feature of life in northwest Bergen County have academic overtones or, let us say, academic undertones. Where I grew up – a town with few aspirations to the Ivy League – people who committed suicide generally did so for romantic reasons that sometimes verged into economic reasons. I try not to write about these cases when they happen to avoid inspiring copycat suicides, but the police and the emergency personnel all know about them. I try not to judge, either. Most of us have at least thought about it. Today, a lot of kids kill themselves not because they could not get into a college, but because they could not get into their dream college. This happens a lot. Still more harrowing are the more isolated cases of students who do the sleep-deprivation thing, get into the dream school, and then decide it was not worth it. My daughter told me about a case some years ago where a young man she knew by sight, having graduated from Princeton with honors, got into Harvard Medical School and graduated in the top half of his class. He now had a chance to save and improve lives and make a lot of money at the same time. At the graduation party at the shore, the new doctor – a competition swimmer in college – had just a few drinks, swam out to sea, and was never seen again. Nobody who knew him thought he was dumb enough to do something like that by accident. College is important, if you really want to be there and have the cerebral wiring to handle it. College is not to die for. The one college you insist on is especially not to die for. A live EMT who saves 20 lives a year and supports a family has done America and the world a whole lot more good than a Harvard Medical School guy who kills himself to send somebody a message. I cast no stones. The death of a person with that kind of brain power and selfdiscipline is a major loss to America. People who have studied the near death experience report that the two messages survivors bring back are: Never kill anybody else, and, above all, never kill yourself. The third message is that many survivors regret not spending more time with their families, but no survivor regrets not having spent more time at the office or having more money in the bank. I suspect that my signal failure was a success of sorts. Wally may skip or postpone college, but he is alive, and aims to stay that way. The other night, I said farewell to Wally, who represents a failure of which I am rather proud. Wally is my first tutorial student who did not get into college, but he is still alive. I inherited Wally from the family of Milo – neither kid lives around here, and these are not their real names – and I worked with him for three years. Wally was a troubled student from Square One, as his parents and teachers had the honesty to admit. He has Asperger’s Syndrome, and while he also has a high IQ, he could not concentrate on taking tests or discipline himself to keep from letting his teachers know that he knew some of them were clueless. Milo had different issues. He had a congenital weak heart, so much so that he had taken several trips to the hospital and was not expected to live. He was bright, and very brave. At one point, he reportedly corrected the terrified young ER physician’s procedure, talked the physician out of a momentary panic, and got his own treatment back on track. Based on this and on his almost uncanny ability to learn Japanese, which was not his first language, my wife dubbed him an honorary samurai. (She has the credentials to do so.) By focusing on the academic subjects he actually liked, and on his superb skill at scale modeling, Milo got himself admitted to three different four-year colleges that specialized in architecture and engineering. Wally gave me a greeting card at our last lesson last week. He wrote: “Of all my tutors that I have had not one was able to understand me or push me in a way that I was willing to work with then. No one but you. So thank you once again and I hope you have a happy and healthy life.” In final tribute to my diligence, every word was spelled correctly. I told Wally what I hope and believe is true. His sort of mental wiring tends to palliate with maturation, and five years down the road he may actually be able to attempt some sort of academic performance. Wally is definitely not stupid, and I never took him to be stupid. The teachers he dealt with professionally told me he had an IQ of 28, but this was because they evaluated his written test without realizing that his problem was his catastrophically short attention span, not his ability to absorb knowledge, especially from visual sources. When I first encountered Wally, he could barely be forced to read a paragraph or write a sentence. When I left, he had finished “The Star Rover” by Jack London, and described the various episodes of that amazing exercise in imagination so I knew he had actually read it. He was capable of writing sentences that showed he understood SAT words that were almost free of error. He also wrote poetry to imaginary girlfriends and ultimately to a genuine girlfriend. Unfortunately, the years when he had been diagnosed as having a seriously sub-normal IQ as opposed to a very bad attention span had enabled Wally to avoid reading and writing to such an extent that he never developed the affinity for the written word one needs for academic completion without extreme self-discipline. Wally spent most My signal failure was a success of sorts Area Water company’s rate to increase by two percent by John Koster The price of the water provided to Ridgewood Water Company customers in Ridgewood, Glen Rock, Midland Park, and Wyckoff will increase by two percent at the next billing, according to Ridgewood Water Company Director Frank Moritz. The new rate, Moritz said last week, will be $4.42 per 1,000 gallons, which he noted was an increase of nine cents on 1,000 gallons of water. The exact date of the increase was not known at press time, but was expected to become effective before the end of June. The utility instituted 21 percent rate increase in 2010 and an additional five percent increase in 2011. Glen Rock, Midland Park, and Wyckoff have taken Ridgewood to court about water rate increases. The three towns say the increases are not equitable because, they claim, money from water company customers in Glen Rock, Midland Park, and Wyckoff has been used to pay Ridgewood police and fire department salaries and other expenses not related to the delivery of water to customers outside of Ridgewood. The three communities charge that $4,465,928 in improper expenses was charged to water customers, including $2,413,737 for health insurance, $645,362 for the Ridgewood Police Department, $570,374 in municipal attorney fees, $435,995 for engineering, $189,864 for the police and paid firefighters’ retirement system, $180,600 for the fire department, and $29,996 for the consolidated police and firefighters’ retirement system. Ridgewood officials have denied any wrong-doing, but declined to offer detailed comment due to pending litigation. Wyckoff Mayor Christopher DePhillips said the rate increase was “unjustifiable” and that he would confer with former Mayor Joseph Fiorenzo, the attorney representing the three towns in the litigation, about “how best to respond to the groundless and unjustifiable increase.” Glen Rock Borough Administrator Lenora Benjamin was surprised to learn of the pending increase. The Ridgewood Water Company argues that the company is in a new mode of expanding technology and that the new increase will not be retroactive. Defenders of the Ridgewood Water Company have argued that the quality of the water is excellent and that the actual rates, despite increases, are still lower than those in most surrounding communities. Competing rates, which sometime have sliding scales to reward sparing use of water, are now calculated at $4.92 per 1,000 gallons for the most sparing use in Allendale, $5.25 per 1,000 gallons in Ho-Ho-Kus, $5.50 per 1,000 gallons in Fair Lawn, $4.79 in Waldwick, and $4.95 in Ramsey. The rate for United Water of New Jersey is $5.30 per 1,000 gallons. On June 13, the Ridgewood Village Council adopted an ordinance that had been carried eight or nine times. That ordinance provides a schedule of new fees for metering services, billing of fire hydrants, and other services, including duplicate bills. This ordinance did not implement the water rate increase, which Moritz said is a separate matter and does not require a vote of the Ridgewood Village Council.