Growing Feral

Really nice recipes. Every hour.

All For The Game moodboards: Kevin Day (+yellow) for @wehsninski

I mentioned in the notes of the OP that I was reading at a college level by the time I was twelve. I was reading at a high school level in fourth grade at least. I often had to take the words-per-minute reading tests a second time, with my teachers watching me more closely, because they didn’t believe I was actually reading that fast. In second grade we had to write a short story each week, based on our choice of four given prompts. I often wrote two or three instead, just for fun. (My teacher ultimately told me that I could totally write as many stories as I wanted, but I could only turn in one for her to grade.) 

I was also suffering from a learning disability that made math almost completely inaccessible to me. And this wasn’t subtle at all. I don’t mean I took longer than other kids but would ultimately get the answers right. I mean I would break down crying in the middle of class because I was so confused and overwhelmed. I almost had to go to summer school after second and third grade because I was so behind in math. I was struggling with times tables long after most of my peers had them down; I ultimately only learned them because my teacher started playing songs to help me memorize them. I still have to sing those songs in my head now, as an adult, to do multiplication.

But–in large part because I was gifted in this other area–this incredibly blatant disability went completely unacknowledged. No one believed I was struggling with math.  They thought I was being intentionally disruptive, or that I was bored and wasn’t really trying. They got frustrated with me for embarrassing them. 

And then that impacted my self-esteem, because how could I be so smart and yet have so much trouble with math? How come no matter how hard I tried, my brain wouldn’t pick it up the way it did language? I felt like I was the bad guy, like I was somehow deceiving the adults in my life into thinking I was smart. As an adult, I still struggle with this underlying fear that I’ve somehow tricked the people around me into accepting me, and that if they look too closely I’ll let them down. 

PSA: Minneapolis/St Paul area

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2 yrs later: