Project Nim Page #2

And he would come over and he would

just come and sit with you and hug you,

and then just kiss the tears away.

You know, it was amazing.

Just unconditional.

He was my life line,

he was my buddy,

and he was bringing something out in me,

a freedom to defy expectation

and authority.

His greatest focus

of defiance was against Wer.

He would kind of

pull books off the shelves,

and Wer liked his books a certain way.

When he saw Wer coming,

he would really do it.

It was very focused. It was intentional.

"F*** you, I'm touching these. "

It was a problem.

Wer was so impotent.

I mean, what could he do? He'd chase

him around. "Drop that! Blah, blah. "

I mean, he won every time.

Nim saw Herb

as his next adult male challenge.

I mean, that is the life

that he's hard-wired for.

To take on increasingly powerful

male figures until he's the top.

When Herb would come over,

expecting to step in

and have control of Nim,

and he couldn't and didn't,

we loved it. We loved it.

I cornered Nim

and just went to pull him out of some

hiding place, and he bit me.

Frankly, everybody in

the family got a kick out of Nim

doing just what Herb hated.

No one ever put him in his place,

and he just grew

more and more and more powerful,

and that was exciting to me.

We didn't have to try

to control him in any way. In fact,

we enjoyed just letting him

hang out and see how it went.

Stephanie being

the kind of mother she was,

was not very concerned about discipline.

It was sort of the hippie mentality,

and I think what I would tell her

would go in one ear and out the other.

Herb would have wanted

a schedule and a structure

and charted progress

and notes and all of that.

I didn't supply that,

I couldn't create that,

and I don't think Nim

would have thrived in that.

I was taking classes

at Columbia University

and there was a small sign that said,

"Research assistant needed,

course credit granted. "

A man opened the door

and he was completely breathless.

Also, he's one of those men

who was balding on the top.

So he had his hair pasted down,

but he was so upset and dishevelled

that his hair was standing

straight up on one side.

He explained it was a language project

and I immediately understood

the scientific relevance.

Nim was going to test

the nature-versus-nurture hypotheses

that were prevailing at the time.

It really was at the cusp of science.

You know, some things are just

immediately obvious about someone

from the beginning.

You know what kind of person you have.

I think she was 18, if I'm not mistaken.

At the time,

Nim was in Stephanie Lafarge's house,

and my first job

was to basically baby-sit.

To go to the house and ostensibly

teach him sign language.

She came out of nowhere as a

cute little thing from Ramapo.

When I got there,

I was actually really surprised.

There was utter chaos.

There was nothing.

This was a scientific project.

There were no journals.

There were no log books.

They didn't know who was covering Nim,

when they were going to be covering Nim,

who would be teaching Nim,

when they would be teaching Nim.

They didn't know what

they were going to teach Nim.

She quickly felt her power.

It was completely visible.

Everybody had to adapt to it.

She wanted that mother role.

This animal

climbed the walls all day.

He ripped apart Stephanie's house

all day.

The kinds of things she was

exposing Nim to were atypical.

He loved driving fast

in cars. He loved motorcycles.

He loved, you know,

virtually anything thrilling.

He liked alcohol.

You'd give him a sip and he'd want more.

We gave him puffs on a joint.

We didn't have to

treat him like a child.

We could expose him to

the sensations that we enjoyed.

I had an instinctive sense

that something was very amiss here,

that this is not the way

you teach a child language

or you interact with a child

or you teach anything language.

When Nim began to

discover my body, my nakedness,

he'd be curious.

Like a child, he was uninterested

and then one day he was interested.

I never felt sexually engaged with him.

There was a sensuality,

but Nim was, you know, a pre-teen.

Stephanie was a graduate

student in psychoanalysis.

Her questions had to do with

the oedipal complex.

And she was interested

in Nim's masturbation

and how he masturbated.

I couldn't believe it.

I realised that I could not do

what I call good science

in Stephanie's home.

It just wasn't conducive to that.

So I set up a classroom at Columbia.

He's gonna

take Nim to school

and I realise I'm starting to

lose my role

as the person who knows the best

what he needs.

We had to get him

in a context that was

neutral, calming, soothing.

I just mapped out

a teaching plan for Nim

and I did it.

She was so enthusiastic

about this

that I made her, in a sense,

the director of education,

the curriculum.

I was feeling good about myself.

Also, I was succeeding with Nim.

I could see I was succeeding with Nim.

I can see it, I can see that no one

could hold a candle to me.

The only thing that mattered to him...

It became more and more tense.

Words, words, words, words, words,

word order, word order, word order.

He couldn't see anything else.

Herb started seeing the signs

grow on that little graph.

Every day, every other day,

every three days.

Laura taught him another sign.

Laura taught him another sign.

And I just went hell for leather.

Nim's signing was just

almost exponentially increasing.

I was very happy.

Words are a f***ing nightmare

when it comes to closeness, often.

And here I was, married to a poet,

working for a linguist...

You know, words became the enemy.

She started restricting the times

we can come in the house.

She started throwing us out.

She, apparently, was

encouraged to believe

that she was now the mother.

Stephanie began to threaten

to take Nim away from Herb.

And Herb started panicking.

I definitely initiated

the move out of Stephanie's house.

I think she was initially

quite resistant to it,

especially since she didn't know

exactly how Nim was going to end up.

God had spoken.

That's what had happened.

That's what was going on.

And we didn't have control.

So... my separation from him

was just as abrupt, in a way,

at that moment,

as his was from Carolyn's.

I was ostensibly conscious

but I was no less...

I was as unaware

and, you know, un-in charge

and helpless as she was.

It...

It was heart-breaking,

saying goodbye.

Part of me did not

want him to learn language.

He was less with language

than he was as his unique self.

At that time,

a very lucky thing happened.

I was aware that there was an estate

that Columbia owned in Riverdale,

a very large estate, that used to

be the home of the President.

And I went to him with a proposition

that if he allowed me to raise the chimp

there, I would pay for the heat.

And he said "Sure. "

This was amazing!

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