Personal Recounting:
Dyslexia Dyslexes.
About 1981 a bunch of doctors and teachers were telling me I was stupid.
This had come after a series of tests in school, and some fancy-pants medical type place (I dunno) on the Hudson in Terrytown. It looked like a college. My parents took me there a bunch of times.
Back then they didn't really talk about Dyslexia, but they talked about LD: Learning Disabled.
From then on I spent significant portions of everyday at the Resource Room. This is where I got extra help. Come on man, you couldn't think of a word other than 'Resource'? Did you not realize what this would be warped into? It took five fucking minutes. We later shortened it to Rebo Room. I'm not sure how we got Rebo from Retard. I might as well have walked around with a giant 'R' tattooed on my head.
This was a hard, unhappy time, 1981 through about 1986.
One of the reasons why I don't talk about it [until now-Ed] or write about it [also until now-Ed] is its really difficult for me to do so. That is, there are people suffering in the world in unhappy in unimaginable ways then and now and to put my own little troubles up against that, well, let's just say I've always had some perspective on the thing.
But don't tell me something wasn't wrong. School was a struggle. Homework was a struggle. To this day I hate the end credits of M.A.S.H., because that always meant it was homework time. Just as I love the sound of an air conditioner because it means summer.
You know those meme's you see about the worst part of Sunday being you know in 12 hours you'll be back at work? Preach it, brother.
Friday nights were glorious, just glorious. Sunday nights miserable.
Second grade was tough. Fourth grade I got into a lot of fights with that bastard John E., who seems un-findable even in this day and age. I once hit him in the head with a chair, motherfucker. Lots of time in the principal's office. Fifth grade wasn't bad so much as...accepting for me. Like NYC in the 80's simply accepting the fact that it was rundown and crime-ridden and that's just all there was to it. The year 1984 (4th-5th grade) just gives me the willies and it has nothing to do with George Orwell.
For some reason 3rd grade was the happiest of my childhood, we'll have to delve into that in another post.
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