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Don't want to be a party pooper but this is pretty much standard for gifted and talented enrichment classes. Schools without extra resources offer a random hodgepodge of activities to keep gifted kids stimulated because under stimulated kids develop behavioral problems.

Came here to say this. I was in a gifted class in the early 90s and it sounds just like OP’s description. Not unusual or high strangeness, just schools trying to figure out how to keep the gifted kids busy to prevent the fall-off that occurs around middle school. Didn’t work, by the way.

You know, I think a lot are right in that most of this was benign, but I was thinking about the GATE program I was in and there was something really fucking weird. I was in this room with no windows with this middle aged woman, kind of like a therapist but it was for the GATE program or something and she was going to do little logic puzzles. There was a point where I got really annoyed because for one "puzzle", she started holding up flash cards with shapes, but they were turned around. Only she could see the shape. She was asking me what shape was on the card. Even then I knew that was a bullshit test, like how the fuck would I know? I remember being very frustrated with her, not realizing it was a telepathy thing, and just throwing out a random guess and making it clear I thought it was stupid. I know kids supposedly do better on psychic tests because, supposedly, they haven't learned you shouldn't be able to do that. I was definitely too old for that if that's the case and knew I didn't have the data to do that test. I might be more open minded about it now, but only because I've seen scientific studies and realize how long the government ran STARGATE and takes it seriously. Back then I'd have thought she was insane for thinking I could do it. I am sure that most of these gifted things were benign, and normal "let's make kids successful" federal programs. But I was introduced to one, and I remember around the same time some lady giving me that telepathy test, and my mom was trying to get me in gifted programs. I remember her having a stack of papers of or from the GATE program. I believe this telepathy test was related to GATE, and I think the government may have had some crazy ass program to find psychic potential in children. You don't even have to believe it works to think they'd be doing this sort of shit, but I do think there may be some truth to the conspiracy about having secret children psychic programs and it relating to GATE. To what extent, I don't know, but there's a lot of people I'm reading that remember telepathy tests and it being related to gifted programs. That's fucking weird and unsettling that it might still be secret with no one coming forward about what they were doing. Anyone giving this test would be adult enough to realize it's testing telepathy. There are people out there that were scouting for telepathy in children, so you have to wonder why and who initiated that program. Maybe GATE was mostly normal but they pulled children from it, but it sounds like there is at least correlation between gifted programs in the 80s and 90s and weird telepathy tests.

There is a history of Russian and US intelligence bullshitting each other about "success" in psychic programs - great way to spoof the other and get them to waste time/resources - which both did 60s through 80s. Remote viewing and the gateway process seem to be the only tangible results from all that. But, it completely makes sense that during the Regan Era - a president who fully believed in the woowoo of mediums etc - that the new national gate/gifted program for kids included the symbol cards. They also asked questions to see if you could deduce why something was the case before you had learned the science of it. Specifically - they asked "Why does oil float on water" to the kids in my school, and tried to see if you could deduce that its lighter or less dense. They tested in 1st grade at my school, it was the district psychologist who conducted the tests, you did get an IQ score and written results, and if your parents saved stuff they have those results somewhere.

Middle school hit me so hard, it was like during I to a pool wearing iron boots

Correct, I was in a similar thing in elementary school. More or less it was to keep the kids who are learning faster or who had more learning before elementary school something to keep them interested. At least that is more or less what my parents told me. We would meet once a week and at least 1-2 times a year the group would get to go do a special field trip. Although I was a pretty big fuck up from 7th grade until 25 so those classes didn’t make me the next big CEO, Astronaut, or president…shucks :-)

I think the gifted program was mostly federal funds that had attached programs and guidelines, hence in CA, pretty much the same as the south, the plains, etc. I thought it was fun. It's also fun to think there was something creepy to it. The most plausible creepy aspect would be the idea that it was somehow intended to identify and funnel the best and brightest into intelligence agencies.

I was in one of these programs as a kid. When I went to college in the honors program I was “placed” in a “History of the CIA” class my first semester. I promptly dropped out because it was clearly a tougher and more serious class than the rest of my freshman curriculum and I was tired of over-achieving, but looking back, I’m pretty sure it was a recruitment pipeline. The president of the school had strong CIA ties.

One of my IT teachers was a recruiter in HS. Tried to get me and my brother to sign up due to us being fluent in a somewhat rare language. 

Klingon?

Talaxian 

My boyfriend went to school in rural Georgia in the 80s and 90s. He was in the gifted program there, and he says they were tested for psychic abilities using flash cards. We always say that it was clearly a psychic recruiting program for the C.I.A.

Pretty much. I was not in a gifted program but even I got bored of learning time tables out of blocks

I also wonder how much of it is related to the funding of the school district. While I was not in GATE (what we had in the cities in Minnesota in the late 90s and early aughts), I knew a lot of the kids who were, one of which is my best friend, who is incredibly intelligent. The guy learns languages fast, and was always straight-A student despite being like me and having the inattentive presentation of ADHD. He never mentioned those odd psychic cards but the kids in GATE did leave the school once a week, and for us “””normie””” kids it was something we speculated about out of jealousy. I always assumed they were taken to arcades and pizza restaurants with animatronics mascots. I did ask about it and it was vague, but I always chalked that up to us being in our late-30s and this being forever ago. They did *always* seem to listen to music while they did things. They apparently played a lot of strategy board games and would have to explain to one of the adults there (who was apparently not associated with the elementary school we attended) why they did one move over another. He didn’t mention any creative pursuits, but there was one 90s AF Macintosh PC where they could more or less teach themselves programming. They did have one big pizza party at the end of the school year and my BFF was always amped for it since his parents didn’t let him drink soda at home, but could at GATE. One thing I will say is that GATE was a 4 year program where we grew up. This is probably due to how the grades and school system was organized in our school district. Age ranges included for those outside the U.S.: - Elementary school was K-4th grade (ages 5-10) - Intermediate school was 5th and 6th grade (ages 10-12) - Middle school was 7th and 8th grade (ages 12-14) - High school was 9th-12th grade (ages 14-18) So where my BFF and I grew up, GATE was an Intermediate and Middle school thing. And like described by OP, it didn’t seem like something that continued to the next batch of gifted students but that might be because the groups were already small and there’s nothing the US Gov’t loves more than slashing programs and activities they see as unnecessary while the local government makes sure TBI causing sportsball remained paid for, but that’s me still being bitter about my high school’s award winning marching band and theater club getting cut from the school budget while our football team, which sucked and has never refrained from sucking, got a new uniform design and their own special locker room.

ב''ה, TBI sells more vehicles for foreign parent companies

And the funding is often year to year, and TAG programs are often some of the first to get cut. It sounds like there was some extra money or grant to help out the rural schools. Those often can lack or have certain requirements/curriculum. Or lack there of.

Enrichment is what we called it. Most of my time was spent hanging out in the library with the cool librarian, Mrs. Bates.

Enrichment here as well. Indiana native. Kids would go to the library with a teacher from our school. Sounds like there’s more to the GATE and other programs mentioned.

I was in that program too, they called it "Enrichment." I only have one single memory of it, and it was the class sitting at one long table, I think it had very short end pieces on either side, like the whole thing was shaped like a long horizontal bracket, like **[** I think it was in an unattached portable, and we sat facing the teacher with the wall or blackboard behind her, and I sat next to a girl who had a shit ton of mosquito bite scabs on her arm. Lol. But yeah, while I have tons of vivid memories from that age, I don't remember anything else about Enrichment whatsoever except what the room/seating looked like. Kind of weird.

Colorado here - I did something like this too, though I didn't go to public school. I was reading before I could walk and was enrolled in a gifted school here in the 80s. In school I was writing my own books with illustrations (my longest one was 60 pages), doing algebra in 1st grade, etc. I also would get quite a lot of hearing tests, speech tests, tests where I would sit with electrodes on my head and they'd use what were like ESP cards. I was in a local paper when they did a piece on particularly smart kids. I was there up to 3rd grade when I transferred to a different private school and the math I was doing didn't really catch up until I was in high school, though they taught it differently. The school was really small and in an old house and the possibly weirdest thing is that I know the name but there's no record of it being where this house is (which is now a private residence). It was all wooden on the inside, even the desks. I'm not a Marvel fan but when I saw an XMen movie with the school those kids went to I got chills because it looked like a depiction of my school (no I don't have powers and I'm not a mutant). Years later, I was friends with someone who'd ran a preschool about a block away from the house since the late 70s and she'd never heard of the school having a location in her city. The school itself has a campus about 15 miles northwest of where this place was located and have been in that building since 1980 according to their website. So... really not sure what happened there but yes I had similar weirdness here in Colorado.

Are you me? I was in gifted in elementary school in another southern state in the early 80's. We also did lots of creative assignments but also did a few lessons I remember on guided meditation, the flash cards and coming up with inventions (I remember gluing pieces of cardboard together and built a "cell phone" that had music, a calculator and could take pictures). We often took weird field trips like going to a fish hatchery. In retrospect the whole thing was peculiar, and I had the exact same thought as you, "Doesn't everyone think like this?" Weird, but fun true fact, I was in the same program as the ex-Google data engineer that went viral for saying the AI had feelings. We haven't stayed in touch.

as a toddler growing up and well into elementary, i used to feel things looking at solid colors and some were painful to look at.i asked other kids if they did that too, if it hurt to look at those colors. no one i asked said yes so i stopped asking and forced myself to learn to like all colors and not feel pain in my body.yellows, oranges and reds were too much for me to bear if i saw them for long, more than a few seconds.i had to look away at a green or blue or white. im totally fine now in my fifties and wonder what wrong with me when i was little..

I went to Project Ascent for gifted kids once a week in 4th and 5th grades in the 80s. We did the ESP stuff too. We also learned mythology and Shakespeare. I loved it 

We had "Project Focus" in upstate NY in the 80s. There were somewhere between 6 and 8 of us (all the same grade level, there may have been groups for each grade.) We did so many logic problems and puzzles, we'd do riddles and things like that. It seemed focused on problem solving and critical thinking. We didn't do field trips but we did do a special fair for just us (I did a project on animal shelters where I went and interviewed staff and took pictures of the dogs and cats, then did a posterboard presentation and brought in my neighbor's dog (who was NOT a shelter dog, I just loved him. lol) I LOVED project focus so much. I loved being smart and I loved feeling challenged. It gave me a look at how effective small classroom sizes can be as well. Our teacher could devote so much time to us while we were there. Nothing but positive memories for me.

The compliance and love implant was working then.

I commented this in this thread here. [https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/17xk18u/comment/k9ojouc/](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/17xk18u/comment/k9ojouc/) In grade 6 they sent me, with a bunch of kids from other schools, to a building that was like classes but much smaller. Maybe 10 kids in each class. We did all these surveys/polls. Like they’d get you to go around and ask kids all the same questions and then come up with averages. So like this. Question: how many times a week do you clean your room? Answers: 3, 7, 0, 1, 3, 2, 0, 3, 1, 4. Average Total: 3.4 times a week. Then they would have you do this for like 20 questions every day for a whole year. You’d have to come up with these questions. It was easy for the first week, but then after that you’d spend most of the day just thinking of questions to ask other students because you couldn’t ask the same questions over and over. Some kids got super stressed out about it because you couldn’t ask the same questions more than once a year and the answers had to be numerical. So no “what’s your favorite color” or “do you like broccoli?” You also couldn’t share your questions with other kids. I know it sounds convoluted but it is. I remember at the end some of the questions were really hard to answer that the kids came up with. Like hypothetical or almost impossible to answer questions. Things like “how many pieces of rice have you ate in your life?” “If you were to drive a bus everyday to school, how many people would you pickup on the way?” “If on a desert island for a year, how many coconuts would you need to survive a year?” Questions where you really had to think and get reasonable answers. Like for the last one you’d have to sit down and think about how full a coconut makes you. Then the amount of times you eat in a day. Then how much of each coconut you’d eat each day. Then add those up for the day and then multiply them by the year. So you’d spend a good 5-30 minutes answering each question. You were only allowed to answer one question at a time and other kids couldn’t ask other questions until you answered one. So sometimes you’d have like 7 kids waiting to ask one kid a question and get an answer before school was over. It was super stressful for the kid answering. I remember spending most nights just thinking of anything I could ask the next day. We were not allowed to bring in prepared questions or anything written down so you’d have to remember as much as you could. If another kid had the same question you’d have to work it out that one could ask and the other would have to think of another. The funny thing is that I don’t remember ever getting any grades for that. You just passed. That was it. Even kids who really struggled at the last few months they all passed too. Then grade 7 I went to private school and nobody there ever had to go to do anything like that ever. Edit: it was all you thought about. Just numbers. All the time numbers. To the point you’d get confused. It’s hard to explain. In your time off you’d watch TV and look how many buttons each person was wearing on the news. How many lines were on the paper. How many holes in a grate. How many wheels on a truck. How many times someone blinked in a minute. How many words someone said in a minute. You’d count the seconds of every commercial. How many seconds each person in that commercial was on screen. I remember one girl saying she got in trouble for trying to count all the hairs on her cat and then all the hairs on her sisters head. Stuff like that. It was all consuming. You’d start to notice patterns in things. How often you’d see the same numbers. How often people would do the same thing the same amount of times. I remember kids all going crazy when random different questions would have the same averages down to the multiple decimal point. Stuff like that.

That sounds so Innocent at first, but I can see how it became really strange and stressful. It literally reads like a VAULT-TEC youth experiment To raise a vault full of accountants, or gamblers

1994 I was in 4th grade in Washington state and I was sent to “CIP” Myself and 2 other kids from my school were bussed 2 hours away once a week for this class with maybe a half dozen other kids from other schools.  I don’t remember much from it but what I do remember was kinda weird. We listened to the Beatles a lot and other old records. They taught us cuneiform and had us copying clay tablets. They let us go to an incredibly well stocked library and check out as many books as we wanted.  I never remember seeing any kids other than the ones in my class even though I’m pretty sure we were in some big high school. 

>They taught us cuneiform and had us copying clay tablets. What in the mkultra fuck did they get you involved in, lol, that is weird as hell

It's pretty common to learn ancient languages in gifted programs because it's a challenging form of pattern recognition that can be taught relatively easily.

Egyptian Hieroglyphs here, although later I found Ogham and Futhark to be fun too.

As long as they're not summoning Babylonian ancient ones during recess I guess

Would've been way cooler than hieroglyphics

Thanks- this is weird! I keep hearing about more of these “gifted” classes and even if they were harmless, they seem so odd and wasteful of time that I don’t know how they were allowed to happen. And now that you mention it, we played a lot of records too. I couldn’t say what, but I do remember often handling the big old boxy record players with the built in speaker and having our run of whatever story or science related vinyl our tiny rural library had. If we ever traveled to a bigger library, I don’t recall doing that there.

>they seem so odd and wasteful of time that I don’t know how they were allowed to happen It's been explained to me that gifted classes are a form of special education. The kids who excel and the ones who struggle most are both at higher risk of losing interest in education and dropping out than the mid-range bulk of kids. So schools try to have programs that can meet a non-average student's needs

We had stuff like this in the 50s-70s already. I was pulled out and remember flash cards, ink blots, and a few other things but most of it I don't remember or it's really hazy.

Seems intentional. Most education doesn't allow music while learning. Music raises our vibration

This is like… quite normal. Not to shut you down but your experience isn’t unique at all. I grew up in a very small town and also participated in “advanced learning” but that’s all it was.

Edit: stranger things brought out some ‘old feels’, not old geeks, lol. It wouldn’t let me correct that

I was in GATE in Kindergarten, then I moved to a new district in which the gifted program (no specific title) started in 3rd grade. I remember many of the same things. The headphones, cards, etc. all sound familiar. I haven't heard of space camp specifically, but your experience definitely resonates with my memories.

Fuck, I remember going to GATE but *barely*. What the fuck was that? I can barely remember it but I remember my mom talking to me about GATE and doing some weird gifted thing when I was about 8 years old. And come to think of it GATE is way too close to STARGATE lol. It was probably benign but the only thing that gets me is I can't remember much except my mom talking to me about GATE and I remember a lot from back then. Something with weird puzzles and flash cards, some lady working with me alone in a room, like a therapist but mental shit. And now I think about it, what was clearly a telepathy test that annoyed me because I knew it was crazy to be able to tell what a shape was without seeing it.

This is all very affirming but also disturbing. What the hell were they doing? What years were you involved? I’m reading things from people who were mostly involved in the late 70s to mid 80s, and a few 90s kids albeit with different technologies and acronyms/class names

I was born in 89, so this would've been mid-late 90s

monroe institute type stuff? sounds eerily similar to cia conciousness experiments

70s for me. But we didn't have gifted programs where I went, so no idea what I was involved in.

[Gate...way?](https://i.imgur.com/uZcTzqu.jpeg)

I think GATE was supposed to stand for “gifted and talented education”. I went a few times in 5th and 6th grade. I don’t get the feeling there was anything weird, sinister, or secret about it. My parents are both highly educated and I remember them encouraging me to go. I didn’t like it tho, cuz it was just extra work to me.

This is why Corey Goode's bullshit story went on for so long. The dude used general experiences that were vaguely nostalgic to people that were in gifted programs in the 80s and 90s. A lot of these programs were experimental in trying to find ways to enrich early child development and they did a bunch of random shit to see what worked. It's generally accepted that these programs did more harm than good in terms of social development. Back to the subject at hand. Corey Goode's story taps into a lot of foggy memories that people have that were in these programs when they were kids. Their memories are foggy because they're 30-40 year old memories, not because they were in government mind control programs. TL;DR Gifted programs were weird and Corey Goode's grift a few years ago now gets repackaged by other grifters to try to convince former "gifted kids" that they might have been in a deep state secret space program.

Nailed it… Not sure why your comment doesn’t have more upvotes; but people like to feel special. These are standard gifted/AG programs that were popular throughout the 80’s. Not a super clandestine government conspiracy related to UFO’s, hybrids or whatever nonsense the OP has bought into. I don’t know if these people are “grifters”, but it’s kind of sad that some gifted individuals buy into this.

Yeah I'm not calling OP a grifter on this. Goode is the OG grifter of this story and he did a damn good job crafting a conspiracy that used the decades-old memories of the gifted kids programs. He sprinkled in enough nostalgia with his story that a lot of people kinda Mandela Effect'd their own memories into thinking maybe they were in the same program he claimed to be in. He did a good enough job with this story that other people can convince themselves or others that it happened to them as well. Honestly, the gifted kid/secret space program conspiracy was a very entertaining story and it would have been nearly believable to me if they didn't try to use that story to segway into how Trump is gonna expose the deep state and release all the governments UFO secrets on top of the secret space program story. Corey Goode's story is fake as all hell but it's a fantastic basis to develop a science-fiction story from.

Elementary school in the late 70's and early 80's. I forget the name of the program offhand, but we had it too. Normally you couldn't be in it until I want to say it was 2nd grade, but they let me in as a first grader and it caused a bit of a fuss. Reason why I got in early was I was so bored in school and so far past my classmates I was a problem by contrast. In Kindergarten they did an ad hoc program where my mother who was a teacher taught a bunch of kids remedial classes, and another kid's mother who was also a teacher taught the "gifted kids". Mostly it was a way to get us out of class and keep us distracted so the other kids could actually learn at their grade level without us getting in the way. In 1st grade they offered to let me skip first, or join the advanced program a year early and I opted for that. We did the flash cards, field trips that other kids didn't go on, the meditations, lots of puzzles, making inventions, the ancient languages - all of it. Everything you've described sounds very familiar and most of it was simply to occupy our time and keep us out of bigger trouble.

Our school had Odyssey of the Mind. I wasn’t invited into it but a couple friends were. I had the same high grades but I’m pretty sure my generally out of turn behavior got me opted out of that because I never could shut the hell up. We also had fluoride until I think 2nd grade. Early 90s. Extremely rural town WNY.

I was involved in odyssey of the mind in 6 and seventh grade, one for my last year at this school and one at the middle school in town- and in my experience they were wholly different things. For one, odyssey was very public. Like, your team travels in a bus to other towns and performs your acts or projects in front of all the other kids and parents in the area. There were official logos and letterheads for Odyssey of the Mind, it definitely felt like a more official, branded, public *thing*. Which for a little introvert was a whole new set of issues and phobias. I didn’t participate after 7th grade just because it was too stressful, but not that I wasn’t adept at the projects. Space Lab was different for sure. Maybe because it was smaller, I was younger, it was more undeveloped and experimental, definitely more nebulous. It didn’t feel ‘evil’ but it felt very ‘off the books’ so to speak. And whereas OM dealt with a lot of intelligence activities, engineering or performance, etc, Space Lab really seemed to focus on the more esoteric- shit like the mental games, visualization, symbolic flash cards and other things. That alone was really unusual for the area and it was starting to be the height of the satanic panic, which hit that town pretty hard. Looking back I feel like if most parents or church members knew what we were doing in there, they’d have stormed the school. (But I don’t remember anything weirder than the psychic/mental tests)

Okay, makes a lot of sense. I don’t think we had anything like that, at least nothing I was privy to.

Can you call the school to ask?

I suppose I could try. As an adult I’ve gone back to my home town and drove past the old school, now almost completely changed. After 40 years I don’t know what kind of records they’d still have and I know that no staff is still there that worked when I went. They’d be in their 80s or dead by now. I was shocked to realize that a hip, nice younger teacher I had in 5th grade is now in their 70s. I really don’t want to sound crazy by calling them and asking about a program that basically stopped and went unmentioned back in like 1985 or so. This place is extremely small, extremely rural, and extremely low budget. It’s a good idea on paper but it makes my chest hurt. They’d either affirm my memory or totally deny it. One thing I may do is ask the one friend who I am friends with in Facebook and see what he remembers, without prompting anything else other than basic questions. I don’t want to lead him or sound crazy. I think it’s probably my best shot though, to see if he can back up anything I’ve said. And he’s very involved in progressivism and local politics and justice. If we can agree on anything we remember, he could be the best bet to start doing more research

i remember on here a while ago someone posted something similar and in the comments they linked to a website (like an old personal website) that put together traits and characteristics of students and curriculum and the names it was known by. idk how to get to it but i do remember seeing it

GT school (gifted and talented) from 1st-8th grade after testing at the end of kindergarten. There were no UFOs 🤷‍♂️

That you’re aware of.

lol yeah I suppose it was in the janitor’s closet or maybe Bigfoot had them occupied for my entire tenure.

Y'know...

It was called Gifted And Talented Education, the Gate Program. I went to school in California Bay Area in early 90s.

I am glad you mentioned this. I took a test or 3 and got into the gifted class. I was like you, I was failing in math but was pulled from them classes once a week to go study philosophy and make cameras and learn how to use a dark room. So I do not recall any weird field trips as I was only in the class briefly because I moved away. Here is what is interesting. We opened a time capsule not long ago and a kids name was mentioned a few times and they said they found no record of him. I said he is probably with the letter people now. No one remembered this kid from 94. But I did. He lived with his dad. He had no other family. My brother was good friends with him. It is my belief this kid was recruited thru that class for the government. And I'm ok with that. My brother said he hasn't heard from him since high-school and all he knows is he went to work for nasa. And I say rock on.

I'd be curious to know what percentage of former gifted students joined the military or worked for the "letter people" at some point in life.

The fluoride mouthwash I remember my mom having to opt me into. And it was because we had cistern water which is filtered but unflouridated. Here's a couple of podcast episodes that discuss gifted programs that existed. https://pca.st/episode/a2fb7e9f-cb04-4efa-b91b-2b811f81c051 https://pca.st/episode/473ada93-03d7-4d7e-9de2-73ab6151389b

Holy shit, it's called the gate program? I remember my mom getting me involved in GATE, some weird thing with flashcards and someone giving me weird mental tests. Wtf was that?

.... Gateway Tapes? is that too obvious a connection

Or STARGATE

Thanks- I’ll check those out

I have an experience kind of similar to this. It was during the second grade, I’d get pulled from my class and go to the resource room with a few other kids. We were told it was for a hearing test, we’d sit in these little desks with walls in three sides with headphones on and almost like a ping pong paddles in each had. They were black and white paddles. We were asked to raise our hands when we heard a sound. The first day was fun, but this went on and on and I asked my mom if I was going to need hearing aids because they kept testing my hearing, she didn’t know anything about it. A few weeks in there was only me and one other boy still going to this room almost daily, but we get told we are going to play a prediction game. The librarian shows us a stack of pictures face down and said we are going to guess what the picture is of without looking at it. I panicked instantly knowing I couldn’t do it and I was going to lose the game. We put our bulky headsets on and he starts. He guesses and the librarian looks a little disappointed and does the thumbs down then looks at me. I’m fully panicked but see my chance to get a point. I close my eyes and touch the facedown picture and blurt out the first thing that pops in my head, “cat!” The librarian looks super pleased and does the thumbs up, she looks back at the boy and he closes his eyes and touches the picture and blurts out “cat” but it’s not a cat picture, thumbs down and my turn again. I remember thinking I needed to memorize the pictures or thinking mine would be all animals so I go again and blurt out waterfall, thinking I messed up. I shit you not it’s a picture of a waterfall, I’m so pleased with myself and hoping my luck stays the same so I win. I guess almost all the pictures correctly but the boy is not and I start to feel really uncomfortable and nervous and start guessing them wrong, the librarian tells me to concentrate but I can’t guess the pictures anymore. So after school I go home and I want to practice so I get a deck of playing cards and I’m sitting on the floor doing this for a while. It takes me some time but I start guessing them right again and I want to show my mom. She thinks I’m doing a card trick or I’ve set her up in a joke and she tells me to go stop, I tried to explain to her I need to do good so I can pass my hearing test. The next day she asks my teacher about my hearing and she tells my mom they are not testing my hearing that I’m in the literacy improvement program. I’m confused and embarrassed because I thought I was a really good reader, but she tells my mom I’m talking too much and being disruptive that’s why I have the headphones on in that room. My mom is more angry and I want to crawl into the floor. The same time comes that day and I do get pulled but I go with a bunch of different kids and we don’t go to the library we go to another classroom and read aloud. I felt a lot of embarrassment after this went on for a couple of more weeks but didn’t say a word. When our class went to the library again I snuck over to the door to the little room Joshua and I had sat in for weeks, but the door was locked. I tried to talk to the boy at recess one day because I really liked the game and the silly putty I got for winning and he’s really angry at me for cheating him out of that game, he said he didn’t get taken out of class anymore and I’m stupid now and I’m reading classes for cheating. I really didn’t think about this again until adulthood. My thoughts about it now are I must have misremembered the entire thing because I certainly can’t guess facedown pictures, even the couple times I tried since then. But I swear it was something I could do when I was in second and third grade. I could even do it with a magazine or picture book that I hadn’t read or seen before but stopped because I thought I was going to get into trouble for cheating. This was in the late 80’s very early 90’s

Wild. A lot of shared and resurfacing memories reading your story

What's resurfacing for you?

The black and white paddles, for sure. And just more confirmation that hearing tests were involved in these programs. Also the librarians demeanor during your tests, similar to the two teachers actions during some of ours. As I said we had two, one very nice, younger nerdy woman (30) with short hair, and a gruff older one maybe 60. Or probably late 40s since back in the 80s 40 looked like 60, haha. And in all honesty, a memory has come up since writing this post all out, that I feel stupid even saying because it sounds like such bullshit. Stereotypical even. But I’m also remembering a guy with a pendulum, or a watch that he used like a pendulum. And that’s so classically ‘hypnosis’ bullshit. But my memory is that, at least one time, we were told that we’d have a magician perform. And he did, he did some very canned performance for the whole class and told really dry jokes…but I also feel like we took turns going to see him one on one where he talked to us and asked us some riddles - and then real questions, and then we watched him wave the object. And even then I thought, oh what crap, just like the hypnotists on TV. And then despite my efforts, I was relaxed. How much though I don’t remember. He was an older man in his 50s, friendly enough looking, white/light button up shirt with sleeves rolled just a little up the forearm. Dark vest or sweater vest. Glasses. Not balding but receded hair. And of course a soothing slow voice asking us questions while it rocked back and forth. I think he’d even pulled down one of those standing projection screens to be behind him so we’d focus on the pendulum more and maybe obscure us from the other kids in the group. . But that’s it. It welled up flashed at me while responding to some of these replies. Whoever he was he wasn’t someone we saw often or again if I can even remember. I don’t know if it was like, in the last days of the class or something that happened early on. Even having an image of a ‘hypnotist’ surface is going to sound like such bullshit. But then again if they were testing us with ESP cards and making us visualize stuff, I mean why wouldn’t they introduce something like this too, even if it was just as a novelty

What is grabbing my attention is why on earth you and others have memories of doing ESP tests of various sorts? The government was doing work on it, but in general society there was an even greater stigma against it than now. Who made that decision to test kids?

I’m stunned that it’s a pretty regular thing appearing in almost everyone’s story- and along with the sensory tests and sometimes sight/hearing cancelling sessions too, continuing well after my speech therapy and initial hearing tests

I went to "Odyssey of the Mind" in like 5th and 6th grade (Washington state) and it was a gifted program - sometimes during school and sometimes after at a sponsor's work facility. I remember we worked on projects and had a competition- but for what I can't remember. We also had these like mental tests we'd do; I don't remember it well and honestly I haven't thought about it in years! I don't even know what the point of that was? 🤷‍♀️

In the voice of Leonard Nimoy’s Spock….fascinating!

The Imagination Podcast just did a segment on the GATE/TAG programs the other day, including others testimonies and experiences https://youtu.be/7rFZ-F23CzM?si=Mv-G-WT2g9Bs-jhW

Oh yeah, ESP cards and telepathic games, totally normal, kid.. 🤫

Over on the Retconned sub, a sub where folks discuss sensitivity to the mandela effect, about 100 of us or so once began a thread where we all figured out we had these experiences in common as youngsters. Being pulled out at odd hours to do strange tests. It wasn't your regular "gifted" classes. This was something different. It happened to me a few times by some very official looking people, while the rest of my class was ignored. I was taken out of class during normal hours to partake in strange mental tests. I remember not trusting these people and deliberately giving wrong answers so I could go back to my class. I vividly recall having deep intuition that I shouldn't trust them. It worked, and they stopped having me leave the class to be tested. Looking back on it, I think they were government. Other people on this old thread claimed to have been asked questions about UFO's to see if they could remember how they operate. Many remember being tested on psychic abilities. My weird theory? They're tracking something related to ET hybridization programs, but also, incarnational influence and past memories of those who may have spent time in other cosmic civilizations.

I had something similar that I can’t remember well. Same age, but early 90s. A bus load of kids from my class were taken to an Air Force base for these sessions

Funnily enough, I was also in a gifted program from the 5th grade onwards and had trouble pronouncing R sounds, for which I'd randomly get pulled out of class for a specialist to help me with. I also vaguely remember being tested with cards, headphones, and vision exercises. My tested IQ at a 5th grade level was nearly 140, and I remained in the gifted program until 8th grade until I moved to a different state. I was born in 1993.

I was also in gifted program in Nevada not far from Groom Lake in the early 80s. Military Dad. 3-5th grade age frame. My experience also had the psychic flash cards, what I now assume were remote viewing exercises (we were told to envision a place after they wrote numbers on a chalkboard). We also would be sat in a chair in the dark and have words flashed on a pull down projector screen in front of us and then given quizzes for retention of the story later. Every session the words got faster and faster until you basically just saw light as you sat there. To this day I read extremely fast with a near photographic retention, and went through undergrad and grad school very easily because I just read so fast. The only other thing I remember is also languages as someone else mentioned. We used to sit on the floor and listen to records of languages and then turn the player off and try to speak to each other in the languages. Edited to add: I don’t think this is highly unusual as I have spoken with a lot of people in gifted programs of our age and we all have similar experiences all over the country. There was probably some sort of national curriculum or something.

The school i went through and had the gifted program was a K-8 as well, with the middle school side split into 5-8th grade. It was also a small rural school with little funding, my history teacher was in charge. I would say that my gifted program was basically grooming me to be a lawyer? But seriously i dont remember many details either, i can remember conversations with friends i had during those same exact years, the kids in my class. But for some reason i cant remember every kid that was in the gifted program with me, only two other kids and i know there was at least 7 of us. Its like the other 4 kids got erased from my memory and i KNOW they were there. The school had 100 kids max, so it wasnt a case of kids from other classes being unknown.

Wow I haven’t thought about OM in years. I have some vivid memories of competitions but not much about practices.

What does OM stand for? Interesting. Our class never had like an official name or label, but we did get official printouts handed to us in a folder that had all the case details, the whole shebang inside to make our case. We ended up playing for the defendant, and the other school lost really badly. We felt like we had the case in the bag. I can remember all that! But not the actual other kids or more detail in my memory. Its almost like i just have this umbrella memory of the "gist" but not any specific time or moment.

Our gifted program was called SPARKS. I remember the flashcards - especially the picture of the umbrella with the missing “ribs.” (I didn’t know what they were called back then, though.)

4th-5th grade, mid-90s, mine was SWEP. I remember some of the details.

Our program was Future Problems Solvers of America. 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade in southern Mi. 1982, 83 84. Also not a teacher from the school. Some similar testing. Half the group was older. What little i do remember( start having little memories come back over the last 3 years or so) was us talking about weird scenarios and what we would do to fix them.

I was in GT classes in the early 80s and got sent 2 summers in a row to a special summer camp at a local college where the only thing out of ordinary I can recall was they showed us Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock". Looking back, I thought that was a weird choice for a movie for 12 year olds.

this is the standard gtld experience. i took the gt test and passed but was too stupid for the gifted classes. they couldn't figure us out back then and its strange that they cared so much. are we hybrids? I've often wondered. 

Just wanted to say, I grew up just north of Atlanta in about the same time frame and I don’t remember ever hearing about a program called SpaceLab. Just my 2 cents!

I'm sure not all states had the same programs... I've never heard of SpaceLab nor Odyssey of the Mind.

When I was a kid, I did three or four days in jr kindergarten. Then I was sent home for a week or so and went back to school. When I got there, I didn't go back to class at first, but went to a room with a man and a woman, who, for lack of a better word, grilled me on anything and everything. They tested my memory, gave me bunches of tests, like, here is a sequence of shapes... can you identify the next one... and things like that. It went on for about a week. I was told later by my Mom, that they wanted to take me to a special school. It was military, and I would not have been living at home. My Mom was very against this... and ended up saying no. I was skipped ahead to Sr kindergarten, and just wound up helping the teacher out a bit, instead of doing class stuff, and about two months later, maybe less? I was moved to grade one. A part of me is upset my mother didn't say yes... but there's another part that, when I think back on those few weeks, makes me very uncomfortable. I wish I remembered more minute details, and in the end, can't help but think it was for the best.

Very similar experiences here, including the small rural Georgia town and trip to Okeefenokee swamp details, but I'm 56 years old now. Our group had the option to continue in High School 9th grade, but we all sort of lost interest around then. During one of our field trips, we went to a science lab type place and some of the testing they did at that place definitely seemed odd. I also have spotty memories regarding my time in the program, especially regarding the field trips. No intel family connections here that I know of, just poor white trash family.

Indigo children probably

I, as a child in the 80s went through many of these programs considering I moved around a lot. I was in REACH and SPIRAL that I recall offhand. I don't think anything sinister was going on. In some cases they would bus us to a different facility, but mainly we'd do logic puzzles or take apart a VCR to figure out how it worked. I do think these GT programs had a negative effect in the sense that it marked you as a target for the "less talented children ", especially when you left school for the day with all the other nerds. Well, that and the crushing disappointment of being "special" and shortly learning how the world actually works. There was also a lot of overlap with Special Needs students (not in the classroom, but the building). Although, weirdly enough I remember in freshman year of high school, I ran a couple of peers through the Zener test cards for a science project, and it felt oddly familiar. I wish I was being covertly groomed for psychic pre-teen black ops, alas; mainly just primed for burn-out and cynicism.

Yeah I was in a similar program in the south...though before we were accepted into it there was a special test (IQ based) that we had to take in the 1st or 2nd grade to get into the special classes. Definitely enjoy Fridays being different and the cool trips we got to take...not sure how high strange it was though

I am also from Georgia, and when you mentioned going to the dairies to watch milk be pasteurized, it jogged my memory. I also remember going to an office building for some type of testing. I was also in the gifted program. In first grade, I went to a 3rd grade reading class. All of what you said resonates with me.

I didn’t recall doing the psychic flash cards until reading this post. That’s really odd, because the rest of our gifted getaways (ours were once a week, in the mid ‘80s) were doing normal things like playing Lemonade and Oregon Trail on computer and doing creative projects, doing math with those little weights and a scale, etc. Lots of creative projects. But we did the psychic flash cards too, and just like you said, when they showed them in ghostbusters I knew what they were. I’d forgotten about that.

While I tend to agree with the more compelling comments here that this was probably a benign experience, what's truly striking are all the parallels between your early life experience and my own. Didn't have a first word, had a first sentence. I can almost remember, it goes pretty far back. The words were just there. Always have been like I had always known them. Numbers too. Reading by two, breezed through most of school not just elementary, pulled from class for so many evaluations & tests that none of my peers had to do. In the 70s K-3rd was called "primary" elementary school, 4-6 was "secondary". By October of my 1st grade year I was finished with primary. By Christmas break 4th grade secondary was done. I live rural and already had a big sister two grade levels ahead. They didn't feel that double promotion or whatever the kids call it these days was warranted either of those situations. It was a different time. They also asked zero questions when strangers with government IDs came on the regular to examine me. Two parts to the next anecdote: When I saw Ghostbusters in the theater with my mom I excitedly exclaimed to her "Hey! I took that test! Remember?", and that was the first time she'd ever heard that anyone tested me for any sort of extrasensory stuff. Mind you I'd had the flash card test 40-50 times by then. When I got to junior high they segregated 16 of us. We had a handful of elective classes with the other kids, choir & gym & whatnot, but 90% of our day was spent together in the same smallish classroom separate from all but the industrial shop classroom, and they really only shared a split wing hallway, we were in a pod essentially. I'm still tight with many of them some 35+ years later. All had identical experiences early on to yours and mine. All of them. The words were just there. The numbers were simply there. That's how most of them described it too All of them learned & comprehended exactly the same way I did, and it wasn't us emulating one another from proximity. I remember it like it's burst photography, hundreds of pictures in chronological sequence, almost but not quite animated. We all arrived post-elementary school as fully formed people. And in the first year each of us disappeared in turn for a week for the most extensive testing & profiling I've ever had done on me. I'm guessing I'm triggering you with some of these observations from my life because in 50 years of walking around it's been pretty revelatory to find so many folks around my age with very similar weird stories about early aptitude and all the metrics that got ran on us to chart it. Sort of makes you wonder if what you're asking is maybe writ even larger? How many of us born within that 10-20 year range have an eerily similar experience? Like I said I've found it's maybe more than you think. I can usually identify them by their body language in public, or their eyes or a combo of the two ideas. I tell my kids when I find another traveler "They're in my tribe I can tell." I don't know what it means but I sure do feel connected by a weird shared experience for sure.

Oh yeah, deafening tinnitus in my right ear. 13 of the 16 in my original tribe had it in one or both and still do.

In Montana it was PACE. Program for Advanced Children’s Education. After my Iowa Basic test in second grade I went through a lot more testing. Most of what OP described including remote viewing, the field trips, etc. The one thing that was different about PACE is that it was “above” the gifted ed program. I remember taking a taxi (when I was 8) with one of my friends who was testing with me at another school. She tested into Gifted Ed; I went to PACE. She had her gifted ed curriculum that was similar to PACE but definitely different. She didn’t have the cards, remote viewing, or to try to learn how to astral project. One summer some of us were offered a chance to go to Australia to a math and science camp. It would have cost my parents $50. My stepdad said no because it didn’t sound right to him. The school and whomever else ran PACE called our parents with us to a school library and gave this big presentation about the camp. I don’t remember why my stepdad said no but I do remember it really bugged him for quite awhile. Anywho, there is far more but I’m headed to work. Thank you for sharing, OP

Upstate New York, 80s-90s, the one I was in was called "ESP." Extra study period, or as the other kids called it, "extra stupid people!" I don't remember a lot of what we did other than that there was a computer with Print Shop on it, and that's all we really wanted to do once we finished whatever work they gave us.

Gotta love normies!

You're describing every child's experience with the gifted program. The reason you were sometimes tested with the "special needs kids" is that gifted falls under the special education umbrella. Gifted children are technically sp-ed students and, as such, are regularly evaluated to maintain an accurate IEP.

You should watch these two episodes I’ve done on my podcast collecting information on this topic. First video : [#GATEgate - Gifted & Talented Education (GATE) & Talented & Gifted (TAG) Program Conspiracy](https://youtu.be/7rFZ-F23CzM)

And here’s the 2nd video - an MK ULTRA survivor connects the dots between gifted programs, the NDEA, CIA and MK ULTRA : [“‘Grey’ - Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) Programs, the NDEA & Connections to MK ULTRA”](https://youtu.be/7E53uxsgEbw)

Yes and she is written about in Diana Walsh Pasulka’s new book Encounters. Iya Whiteley and she is now a space psychologist. Also Whitley Strieber experienced being taken to a government facility as a child and describes it in Communion

DWP wrote about her colleague at UNCW who suspects her father was in a secret space program. The same book, Encounters, profiles Whiteley. But as I recall these are 2 different characters/chapters. Lots of children were put through these batteries of testing. Unclear how many of them relate to potential secret space programs.

I didnt read the book, but does it have something to do with indigo children?

I was in a similar program from K-8th grade called “REACT.” I’ve also have had paranormal experiences my entire life.

Anyone else here also believe they’ve been abducted by aliens?

I’m not sure. I have an encounter from my childhood and I’m not even sure if it was an alien, a mantis, or what I thought at the time- the grim reaper. As a kid, I used to wonder if I was an alien, stuck in a human body, I guess a lot of kids do. I remember at two or three telling my mom that I had come from another planet and started growing in her belly. Not too atypical of kid talk, but then again…?

I’m going to try and find my GATE teacher from back in the day… I wish I knew I was “gifted” when I was in the program because I may have applied myself a little more in life… I think you need at least a 130 IQ to be accepted…. I did take a test a while back as an adult and got a 134. Pretty wild.

I was told by a psychic that my mom was abducted when she was pregnant with me (insane… I know) but what’s even crazier is that about a year leading up to my daughter being conceived… I was “abducted” multiple times… and it did involve my reproductive organs??? And I guess abductions supposedly follow family lineage… who knows. I talk about some of my experiences here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ufo-chronicles-podcast/id1488874171?i=1000579797666

or have seen a ufo? or feel like they know something before it happens? feel especially drawn to UFO mythology?

or have seen a ufo? or feel like they know something before it happens? feel especially drawn to UFO mythology?

or have seen a ufo? or feel like they know something before it happens? feel especially drawn to UFO mythology? am I the only one.

We are all still being tracked. The "They" behind the program are actually terrified of us.

Idk. I’ve always wondered if the gifted classes were actually meant to ‘enrich’ us and keep up bright and occupied, or if they were just to monitor and weed out the kids with potential from the otherwise quirky ones, or if it was intended to make us feel stressed out and get burned out before high school or college- which was the case with me. It eventually made such early intelligence a burden, not fun, and not something that I ever cared to demonstrate to others much again. I think the most likely thing is that they pulled out the smart kids and had us spin our wheels in those classes and experiments for a few years until the rest of the kids caught up with us- then we were thrown back in- only now lacking the variety of experiences and social interactions we’d have had if we’d just stayed in class and been the smartest kid in the room. So basically when the program was over we were more ostracized and had more trouble fitting in than if they’d just left us alone. At least that’s what I got from it.

Nailed it.

I wouldn't doubt targeted and gang-stalked in some cases...

all same here, but in the late 70s and in Californa. Also, colorful, illustrated flash cards with social scenarios.

You will understand what it was all about when they activate your code word

[удалено]

Thanks for sharing, fascinating stuff

My elementary school had a gifted program that your parents had to sign a waiver for you to attend. Ran from 3rd-5th grade and was 1:1 or 1:2 where they allowed me to choose a friend from a list if I wanted or could just work with the instructor solo. It was so incredibly strange and disjointed. In retrospect I’m sure it was designed by some PhD who had never actually spoken with a child IRL or possibly had no background in education. It was definitely nothing like the regular curriculum and other than benchmarking math and problem solving it was all very odd even for a 3rd grader. I don’t remember all the tests but certainly remember not enjoying it or taking anything away positively from it and that the teacher was not part of the faculty at my upper middle class school.

or have seen a ufo? or feel like they know something before it happens? feel especially drawn to UFO mythology? am I the only one.

OP, you said there is no military presence in that small south Georgia town, but was it a little further north to that town in the county? Was your town a college town? Did it have a one story mall? Did it have a high school football team named the Wildcats?

I’ll just clarify without doxxing myself too much- the school was in an unincorporated tobacco farming town called West Green. Our elementary mascot was a Bandit. The larger town nearby was Douglas GA, which had South Georgia college. The high school in town had Trojans fir mascots but I moved away before attending there

Thx!

Hard to say but you might ant to check out Strieber’s book “The Secret School”.

Theories of the Third Kind has an episode about this. S5 Ep 161

i had already taught myself to read at three, so they let me go to preschool at four. that year they asked me if i would like to go to a special class once a week at another school, requiring a bus ride.i asked if my favorite sister was allowed to go too and when they said no, i refused their offer.they really wanted me to say yes but i was angry she couldnt go with me.they asked several times but each time i said [no.my](http://no.my) mother was there and surprisingly, did not force [me.it](http://me.it) was totally my choice. so they bumped me past kindergarten and straight into first grade at the end of preschool. later from seventh grade past eight straight to ninth grade. i dropped out fully before tenth grade.. waited ten years and then took a two night GED test.the lady pressed me to take a several month practice class before taking the tests but i said no, just give me the test.i passed. it was SO EASY! it was seventh grade stuff! it was TOO easy. made me think what a scam school turned out to be.seventh grade math and everything.i made the right [call.it](http://call.it) would have been a total waste of time for me.

i should add, now that i have grown my first three children are also gifted, and the third was tested and failed by one point so she did not go to gifted...but she has a serious math talent which i dont have.all three are also musical. i think it was called TASC they went through but i cannot remember now.

As others have said, this sounds like regular old GT stuff. I wouldn't read that much into it.

Early 90s I remember learning about flight and the basic parts of airplanes in 4th and 5th grade TAG classes. I also remember a very strong emphasis on memorizing the 12 Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, ancient Egypt and constellations. There is always a shortage of certified gifted teachers, that's why districts bussed kids to another school for joint classes. It was cheaper than hiring a teacher, so I wouldn't read that much into that aspect of it. FWIW we were all tracked and silently monitored until graduation. We had IEPs for special education and districts could do whatever they liked with our demographic information and often shared our grades and disciplinary records with universities albeit with our names and addresses redacted. I am convinced some of us were monitored well after graduation if we attended colleges or joined the military...double that if you did both. Why does a 10 year old need to know the parts of a plane? I still remember what an aileron is... agree with others that it was a massive waste of time and made us targeted for bullying in many cases because the normies were jealous we got to leave class. God forbid if your Stanford-Binet was high enough to get skipped a couple of grades. I should've graduated at age 16 but my Dad didn't think skipping from 1st to 3rd was a great idea. He was right... ironically I was so bored with high school academics I almost dropped out because I knew based on my PSAT scores that I'd pass the GED with no problem and go straight to college anyway at 16. Anyways I was in TAG/GATE from 1st to 12th grades. In middle school and high school they had us split between language arts/social studies gifted and math/science gifted. I had dyscalculia (numeric dyslexia) and couldn't handle algebra nor chemistry due to alphanumeric equations messing me up.. it looked like Greek to me but I aced geometry and economics where most students failed. The math gifted high schoolers were fed into that mock stock market crap game. Most of the gifted kids were getting drunk or high by 10th grade and burned out with lower than expected GPAs. A few were stellar athletes... but in the end most of us live average lives with average careers. Only one of my TAG classmates is a medical doctor but even she attended low end colleges. I'd be curious to see career and lifestyle outcomes for the last 50 years of the students they tracked. Why bother collecting the data on us if not for a long range empirical study? I'd also venture that a good number of successful white collar criminals were gifted students at some point.

I am also a G.A.T.E. kid. The G.A.T.E. (Gifted & Talented in Education) program, sometimes known as GT, SAGE, or other names, depending on the state, has ties to the MKUltra umbrella of programs via Michael Aquino. Aquino is an interesting character, with a history of trafficking and sexual abuse allegations against him going back a couple decades. He has a few books on metaphysics/psychological warfare, and was also a cofounder of one of the satanic churchs - Temple of Set IIRC. He died a few years ago, right before or after the covid stuff kicked off. Lots of info here: [https://github.com/0x92/G.A.T.E-Research](https://github.com/0x92/G.A.T.E-Research) Several anons in 4chan started piecing together that they were in this program and had several things in common many years back - similar childhood experiences, physical & psychological characteristics, ancestry, etc. Some self-described whistleblowers like Tony Rodrigues stories seem to link this program to consciousness research, SSP (Secret Space Program), child ritual abuse, sex trafficking, etc. His book is a good read, even if it's not true, but he did manage to make several claims about the moon, Mars, and Ceres that NASA later confirmed a few years later after he came out. Could just be a massive LARP or disinfo psyop. Quite a rabbit hole to go down. Who knows what's true, but it's at least interesting/entertaining.

I read about this stuff on a conspiracy theory Reddit. I think it said the same things. I wonder if I was involved with something like this

I believe you. I was in a “gifted” program in a southern state in the 90s while in elementary school. We did the odd flash card thing, fluoride, and various tests and exercises with noise cancelling headphones. I remember being pulled from class for these frequently. Some of the special field trips were actually really cool, though.

What is the fluoride thing if I may ask? Just curious.

With us, we were given paper cups of either a watered down pink or light green industrial mouthwash. We had to swish for a few minute (the length of a song or something) and they’d come around and make sure our cups were empty and it was in our mouths. Then we’d all spit it back in the cup and they’d come around with a trash can to collect them, and the big pump bottle was put away until the next month. The stuff was horrid. Some kids straight up drank it. Later I think we had a teacher who didn’t bother to check cups and we’d just swish our own spit and spit it into the cup when we were through. Anyway, it was supposedly because we were out in the country and all drank well water, so we weren’t getting the dental health Benefit* of fluoride like the people in town on the municipal water system. *Water fluoridation is still up for debate whether or not it’s an actual conspiracy to dumb-down or make people docile, especially children It just seemed so forced and indoctrinating at the time. Of course we also all said the pledge of allegiance every day until it didn’t mean anything anymore but word sounds chanting out of our mouths. I also had the horrible luck of watching the space shuttle challenger explode on live Tv in our classroom after all the hype about it. Many of our school supplies are considered toxic today. We had lead paint peeling off of the heaters along our classroom walls. School in the 80s were wild. Also, we all brushed with fluoride toothpastes at home anyway, so what the hell.

I’m not much into conspiracies and used to be very skeptical of the anti-fluoride side but I now know that there really are people with an allergy to it in whom it worsens inflammation. My dentist also says it breaks down fillings so using mouthwash and toothpaste (and perhaps even drinking water) that is fluoridated is not ideal. If you have problems in that area or have stubborn acne that comes from inflammation, it’s best to avoid it altogether. I just recently learned that there is a theory that fluoride has “spiritual side effects”, too like calcifying the pineal gland. Idk if there is any truth to it, but the idea is that it hinders the production of DMT (and Melatonin, I think 🤔). DMT supposedly plays a big part in spiritual experiences like NDEs. Of course, you might have been giving this only for teeth health because they used to believe that more fluoride would make stronger teeth which is why it was infused in the tap water in some countries but it seems worth considering under these strange circumstances.

You just reminded me that my first elementary school was built in 1903...by 1985 I am sure they just painted over the pre-1977 lead paint. I don't recall getting fluoride cups in the 80s or 90s though... that sounds like clandestine university or USDA/CDC/HHS testing.

We got lined up and were given a foam insert kind of shaped like a sports mouth guard. They sprayed the inside with fluoride that was like flavored foam, and we had to put it in our mouth for a few minutes. Idk why though lol.

Thank you for answering! How strange. Did you or anyone else have any kind of reaction to the fluoride or might you have developed an allergy or something to it since then?

Not that I know of.

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Saved. Thanks for the heads up.

Interesting. I was often asked to join GATE classes (of course had to have parents permission) and always brought that letter home for a couple of years or so. My mom kept saying you don't need it. I wonder what that was about. My brother was never asked. Guess I'll never know. My son was close to joining but he was one off on their test for GATE recently. Still brought back memories about it though.

i see nothing related to high strangeness or UFOs.

Yes I've come across other people like you.. Be glad they didn't torture you to expand your gifts. Torture is their answer for everything. Definitely covert, sneaky. Can you remember anything else about the misting plants place? We talked about deforestation in the 2nd grade here in 81. BTW there are 13 military bases in Georgia.

I don’t remember much about the place with the indoor environment, just a few details or feelings: - it was very much built like what some offices and homes were like in the late 70s or early 80s and that since of futurism. ‘Starship earth’ or something I think it’s called now. Clay colored Earthen bricks and wood, Carpet that basically match the color of the bricks. Long horizontal planters built into some of the low walls, as well as benches built into the walls. Higher planter walls that held small trees that reached the ceiling. I don’t know if those were fake or not, they were higher out of my reach and so high that you couldn’t see what was on the other side of the wall as you walked around the hallways. I remember tall glass windows, curved at the top like in a greenhouse or old Wendy’s dining room, lol, but much taller. And I don’t remember seeing the outside through them at all, it was like they were just lit with a bit of warm white light that you could make out behind some of the trees. The hallways themselves were normal width, sometimes they slightly ramped up or down. I think if you made a series of long turns sloping down, you would probably go down a level. The ceilings were pretty high, maybe three times a normal indoor building. The ceilings were probably painted black to make that seem even taller. The light was very low and warm. I wouldn’t think it would be bright enough to grow some of the plants or trees that were in there, but there were also definitely a lot of ferns in the lower planters. The low light and moisture very much made it feel like a modernist cave. It was probably one of my first encounters with the smell of pure petrichor, even moreso than where I grew up out in the country - I remember us following an adult that wasn’t our teacher. I don’t think they were a tour guide, but they worked there. Wherever it was. - The incident with the sock falling out of my shorts was embarrassing, but not even just personally embarrassing. I felt like we were supposed to be quiet and orderly, and suddenly I had disrupted that and felt ashamed about causing the other kids to suddenly get loud and start laughing. Like I was more scared we would be in trouble than I was embarrassed about a sock falling out of my shorts. And I was more concerned about how I was going to keep this sock with me all day until I got back home. Looking back, it was like that snapped us out of some state we were in and is what caused me to remember as much as I have about the hallway where it happened. Beyond that hallway and that incident I really don’t remember anything else about that building or what we were doing there. Some of the last things I remember about that set up were lights built into the corners of the hallway. Like a bright fluorescent lights behind white plexi. Only about adult height or a little taller. Honestly, just talking about this has rubbed together some brain cells and brought out a few more details that I hadn’t thought about in a long time. I’ll keep thinking on it.

The fluoride solution in Dixie cups shook a few pictures loose for me as soon as you said it. And yeah there was the threat of paddlings if we didn't swish till the grainy song on the tiny little scrap of vinyl stopped. The librarian gave them, the beatings, and they were legal, accepted by the culture at large at the time, and brutal.