My Biggest Secret

When you spend your grade school years being labeled with words like 'stupid,' 'retard' and 'dumb' you carry those labels inside and let it warp your soul for decades to come. It doesn't matter that as an adult you finally find out that what was wrong with you back in the forties would now be labeled as a learning disability. That message of being less than everyone else is still up there in your noggin waiting to rear its ugly head. Your entire life is colored by hidden childhood hurts and longing to be normal. Being dyslexic is a secret I've carried around my entire life.

I jokingly say that my brain was put in half-ass backwards. The joke is that people don't know that I'm not kidding. It's the way I see myself. The half-ass-backwards remark is a cover-up for times when I do something like turn right when I meant to turn left or I confuse green lights for red. When you've spent a lifetime covering up your "stupid stunts" you find ways to compensate. You follow the others in your group instead of being in the lead. You watch what other cars in traffic are doing at every intersection instead of trusting the traffic signals. And above all you never, ever drive when you are tired.

It's only been a year or two that I've started talking about the fact that I couldn't tell time or tie my shoes until I was well past the age that most kids learn these things. It wasn't until I finally graduated from college at age forty-three that I admitted that my ability to read well came long after I graduated from high school. Yes, I was the high school coed who was always leaving her imaginary pair of reading glasses at home. To this day I can't spell my way past the 'Dick and Jane' books of my youth without my trusty Franklin Language Master 3000 at my side. I can't sound out words.