Press enter after choosing selection
Grade
11

           “Congratulations! / Today is your day. / You’re off to Great Places! / You’re off and away!” Ben read in a crystal clear voice, sounding each syllable off with crisp intonation.  Ben was way better than me at school. He was in the best reading group with all the smart kids, and I was stuck with Ronny and Emma, who had been held back a grade.  After Ben finished his page, he handed the book to Laura, and I was next.  Panicked, I looked around Mrs. Jordan’s third grade classroom for some way to escape, but the friendly reading circle on the back rug was now an ominous wall of eight-year-olds in crisscross applesauce.  If I had known what peer pressure was then, I’m sure I would have felt it… 

 

I guess I had zoned out, because Laura suddenly handed me the book, opened to the page I was supposed to read out loud. I looked down at my daunting assignment.  The letters skipped across the page.  I hunted, but could not catch them.  I cast my net, but the meaning of the sentence just slipped through the holes, commas and periods trapped in the mesh.

 

Coming to the rescue, Mrs. Jordan told me to slow down and sound out the first couple of words.  I mustered a, “Yuu owww.” The whole class burst into laughter and agonizing imitations of my inadvertent Barn Owl cry.  Mrs. Jordan took pity on me, and instructed the next student to read my page.  Relieved, I listened to Sam read.   I was off the hook.  Saved…

 

After ten hours of testing, I was diagnosed with Dyslexia.   “I’m Dyslexic!” I announced proudly at school to anyone who was interested.   “It means I’m not dumb!”  No one seemed too interested. 

 

I tried the personal approach, “Hey, Sam, I’m Dyslexic.” But Sam was busy playing Four Square.  Ben looked up though.  “Hey Ben, I’m Dyslexic,” I boasted.

 

“My Dad takes Tums for that,” Ben responded and headed off to join Sam’s game.

 

“Can I be Dyslexic too?’ asked Francine who never wanted to be left out.  “I like Tums.”

 

“Fine by me,” I said.  It kind of felt good to be Dyslexic.  It was like a club I belonged to, although at that point, I was the only member…

 

To my Dyslexic mind, reading Dr. Seuss was like phonological pole vaulting. It required commitment, focus and a few crazy leaps.  I managed to shy away from vaulting these Seussian poles until the seventh grade when Mrs. Diamond announced that the culmination of our poetry unit was to analyze a Dr. Seuss book and present our findings to the class. 

 

My hands started shaking.  A cold sense of dread slid down my spine.  I chewed my lip until it bled.   I was suddenly in the fourth grade again, mocking nine-year-olds cackling down at me.  Then the bell rang, relieving me of my distress.

 

I found every way possible to procrastinate.  I organized all my Legos by color.  And then I re-organized them all by shape.  I ate all the popsicles in the freezer.  I even cleaned my room.   And then I ran out of things to do.  So I picked The Butter Battle Book for no good reason except that I liked the illustrations of weapons. 

 

I read the book over and over, and over and over again, until I could grasp the story’s general meaning.  Somewhere into my eighth read, I realized the book was an allegory for an arms race.  Intrigued, I did some research and discovered that Dr. Seuss was specifically addressing the Cold War arms race and the terrifying potential of Mutual Assured Destruction, an irrational foreign policy that was appropriately known as MAD.   Context is a boon for a Dyslexic.  And now I was humming with context.

 

Ben’s presentation on The Cat in The Hat was really solid, but I remained calm.  I knew that I was onto something. Dr. Seuss had used the platform of a children’s book to discuss the perils of ideological warfare, and that is what I was going to share with the class.  I was not going to discuss his rhyming structure or the rhythm of his verse.  Others would do that much better than me.  I was going to go rogue.  I was going to go political.  And when I finished my passionate presentation, no one laughed at me.

 

Last Wednesday I was tutoring a third grader named Jerome at the Hillcrest Group Home For Children.  Jerome’s father had been a no-show in his life, and his mother was doing a brief stint in jail.  We had finished all of his math, so we could now do some pair reading.  Jerome chose Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go.  His timid voice trembled with self-consciousness when he started reading, but he soon calmed down and read with good intonation and a natural feel for the rhyming pattern.  Jerome flipped the page, and now it was my turn to read.  I took a deep breath.  I looked at Jerome staring back at me expectantly…  And then I read.  With confidence. But after the first few lines, I stumbled.  The letters skipped a bit on the page.  As I hunted for them, Jerome laughed. 

 

And in that moment, on that wonderful Wednesday, I laughed back.  A small response, but it was huge for me.   “Don’t tell anyone, Jerome,” I said.  “But I learn just as much from you as you learn from me.”  Jerome thought about that for a minute. 

 

“I got some more things I can teach you,” he boasted.

 

“Bring it on,” I replied.

 

“Like, for starters, stop tucking your damn shirt in.  You gotta rock the casual look,” he said, preening.

 

Jerome read the next page with confidence and vigor to show me that he was not only the coolest dude in the room, but he was also the best reader. Which he was.  And the fact of the matter is, I was okay with that.