Me, myself unplugged.
((This is something I felt inspired to write at one point in time. It was a little up close and personal, so I set it to private. But there is really nothing in there that is a shocking deep dark secret, so I've decided to make it visible to everyone. After all, I don't have a million readers anyhow. Yes it is very open ended and sort of just stops. I didn't have the time to write more and never was inspired to come back to this. I have no discipline in writing and really just write "as the wind blows" so to speak. Maybe I'll continue on with this one day. Who knows.))
I don't remember learning to read. I wonder how many people can say that? I have conflicting stories about whether my mom actually went out of her way to teach me, or if I just sort of picked it up on my own. I do know that once I learned, I LOVED it. i would pick up just about anything and start reading. My favorites were Dr. Suess, mostly because he was randomly silly and I thought that was so very funny, but actually I would read anything.
You'd think this would make me a superstar. That I would have been awesome in school and gotten great grades. But no, it wasn't that way. I've been told that my kindergarten teacher told my mother that she shouldn't have taught me to read, that she was pushing me too hard. That is odd because I never remember feeling pushed too hard. In fact, I remember begging for more reading materials, as many as I could get. What's even more odd is that I know for a fact my kindergarten teacher told me straight up that I couldn't read. Yes, that's right. When I pulled out a favorite book and began to read it to her, she accused me of just having it memorized. Well yeah, I did. I had all those books memorized. Left foot, right foot, feet feet feet. How many many feet you meet! How hard is it to remember that? Add on top of this the fact that I was used to being praised for my reading capabilities, that I was a bit intimidated by my teacher's authority and never had to stick up for myself before and I simply just stopped. I gave up trying to tell my teacher the obvious and just knew that I could read whether or not she believed me.
First grade wasn't any better. The teacher was having us learn to read with a book marker. It was just a plain old cardboard strip. We were to put it under the line of text and pull it down to the next line as we were reading. The boy sitting next to me actually told on me for "not reading". He said that I was just putting the marker on the page, sliding it down and then moving to the next page without actually doing the work. No, I could just read at a higher level than what was on the page. What seemed impossibly fast to him was actually not impossible for me or anyone else who could read on a middle school level. Although I never got in trouble for "not reading", my first grade teacher didn't understand me either. I clearly remember being called up to her desk to be chewed out for copying off that boy's paper when I had done no such thing. I was so bewildered over this fact, that when I was shown the papers indeed had the same answers,both right and wrong, I was speechless and didn't know how to disprove something even my eyes could see. It was indeed blatantly obvious that those papers were too identical for no copying to have gone on. In hind sight, Obviously he must have copied off of me. At the time however, I was overwhelmed with fear of getting in trouble that I couldn't speak up for myself or reason out the simple truth of what had happened. Why the teacher assumed it had to me who had done wrong, I didn't know.
During all this time in school, I wasn't well liked, but I hardly noticed. I had one good friend who was inseparable from me. She was quite the tomboy and we would play together at recess. She liked to say things to me like "Those kids want to make fun of you, but if they do I will punch them in the stomach." I hadn't realized that anyone was trying to make fun of me, or at least not the majority of the kids. My lack of social awareness (that I had no idea I had) didn't let me see such things. I thought she was saying that to appear tough and to show me how much she cared about me as a friend. While that was partly true - I doubt she would have actually punched anyone for any reason - There was more to it than I ever realized at the time. I had no reason to think other people didn't see the world the same way I did. I saw no reason why everyone would dislike me and want to ridicule and shun me.
Summer after first grade brought everything crashing down. My best friend's mother was killed when she was hit by a car. The man that I had always assumed was her father, was actually her stepfather. She had to go live with her real dad on the other side of the state line, and that was the end of my having her as a buffer between me and the rest of the student body. I had no way of knowing, but I was left as a sitting duck. My only consolation was the fact that I could still see her. she lived at her stepfather's house whenever there wasn't school, so we stayed friends up through seventh grade.
My second grade teacher was a very sweet Japanese lady. She did not misunderstand me in the way my kindergarten and first grade teachers had. However, I was unfortunate enough to be stuck in a mixed grade classroom. It was second and third grade split, and the teacher didn't seem to have a spare moment. When she wasn't teaching one grade, we needed to be quietly doing school work so she could teach the other grade. This fact meant that I felt ignored when the kids in the grade above me picked on me.
I don't remember learning to read. I wonder how many people can say that? I have conflicting stories about whether my mom actually went out of her way to teach me, or if I just sort of picked it up on my own. I do know that once I learned, I LOVED it. i would pick up just about anything and start reading. My favorites were Dr. Suess, mostly because he was randomly silly and I thought that was so very funny, but actually I would read anything.
You'd think this would make me a superstar. That I would have been awesome in school and gotten great grades. But no, it wasn't that way. I've been told that my kindergarten teacher told my mother that she shouldn't have taught me to read, that she was pushing me too hard. That is odd because I never remember feeling pushed too hard. In fact, I remember begging for more reading materials, as many as I could get. What's even more odd is that I know for a fact my kindergarten teacher told me straight up that I couldn't read. Yes, that's right. When I pulled out a favorite book and began to read it to her, she accused me of just having it memorized. Well yeah, I did. I had all those books memorized. Left foot, right foot, feet feet feet. How many many feet you meet! How hard is it to remember that? Add on top of this the fact that I was used to being praised for my reading capabilities, that I was a bit intimidated by my teacher's authority and never had to stick up for myself before and I simply just stopped. I gave up trying to tell my teacher the obvious and just knew that I could read whether or not she believed me.
First grade wasn't any better. The teacher was having us learn to read with a book marker. It was just a plain old cardboard strip. We were to put it under the line of text and pull it down to the next line as we were reading. The boy sitting next to me actually told on me for "not reading". He said that I was just putting the marker on the page, sliding it down and then moving to the next page without actually doing the work. No, I could just read at a higher level than what was on the page. What seemed impossibly fast to him was actually not impossible for me or anyone else who could read on a middle school level. Although I never got in trouble for "not reading", my first grade teacher didn't understand me either. I clearly remember being called up to her desk to be chewed out for copying off that boy's paper when I had done no such thing. I was so bewildered over this fact, that when I was shown the papers indeed had the same answers,both right and wrong, I was speechless and didn't know how to disprove something even my eyes could see. It was indeed blatantly obvious that those papers were too identical for no copying to have gone on. In hind sight, Obviously he must have copied off of me. At the time however, I was overwhelmed with fear of getting in trouble that I couldn't speak up for myself or reason out the simple truth of what had happened. Why the teacher assumed it had to me who had done wrong, I didn't know.
During all this time in school, I wasn't well liked, but I hardly noticed. I had one good friend who was inseparable from me. She was quite the tomboy and we would play together at recess. She liked to say things to me like "Those kids want to make fun of you, but if they do I will punch them in the stomach." I hadn't realized that anyone was trying to make fun of me, or at least not the majority of the kids. My lack of social awareness (that I had no idea I had) didn't let me see such things. I thought she was saying that to appear tough and to show me how much she cared about me as a friend. While that was partly true - I doubt she would have actually punched anyone for any reason - There was more to it than I ever realized at the time. I had no reason to think other people didn't see the world the same way I did. I saw no reason why everyone would dislike me and want to ridicule and shun me.
Summer after first grade brought everything crashing down. My best friend's mother was killed when she was hit by a car. The man that I had always assumed was her father, was actually her stepfather. She had to go live with her real dad on the other side of the state line, and that was the end of my having her as a buffer between me and the rest of the student body. I had no way of knowing, but I was left as a sitting duck. My only consolation was the fact that I could still see her. she lived at her stepfather's house whenever there wasn't school, so we stayed friends up through seventh grade.
My second grade teacher was a very sweet Japanese lady. She did not misunderstand me in the way my kindergarten and first grade teachers had. However, I was unfortunate enough to be stuck in a mixed grade classroom. It was second and third grade split, and the teacher didn't seem to have a spare moment. When she wasn't teaching one grade, we needed to be quietly doing school work so she could teach the other grade. This fact meant that I felt ignored when the kids in the grade above me picked on me.