During the first grade, I was placed in the back of the classroom for two reasons: my last name starts with a W and I was the tallest student in the class. I would day dream constantly, allowing my imagination to run rampant. A long panel of windows lined the wall just behind me and I would simply stare outside, getting lost in my own world throughout the day. The school’s courtyard sat just beyond the windows and I watched all of the students from other grades pass back and forth from places such as recess, the bathrooms, and music class. I barely completed any work during class since the students outside skipping back and forth, as well as the squirrels playing in the trees, intrigued me more than “reading circle time.” I was also a year younger than every other kid in the class, so when it came to “reading circle time,” in comparison to the other students, I struggled to focus while other kids were reading. My teacher assigned an activity referred to as “Popcorn”; one student read aloud and after reading, another student would be called upon to read aloud. Whenever it was my time to read, I never knew the point in the book we were at since a daydream seemed more interesting.

During that spring, my parents brought me to my pediatrician to be evaluated. I sat in the waiting room, fascinated by four large coy fish in a tank, watching them swim until being called by the nurse. Walking out of the waiting room into the examination area, the nurse led me down one of two corridors containing multiple examination rooms. At the very, far end of the hallway an eye exam chart hung by thumb tacks and I swiftly tested my vision for fun before entering into my assigned examination room. An assortment of blocks scattered across a table for the kids, myself included, to play with. My physician entered with his big smile and a lollipop in hand. That day, I was diagnosed with ADHD without the hyperactivity.

This sticks out in my mind because it was truly the first time I felt different in my life. I was picked on for being “stupid” and big. Jumping up into our family suburban each day after school, my mom asks, “How was your day honey?”

“The big kids keep on picking on me for being stupid, mom!” I would exclaim. “I hate school!” When daydreaming during “reading circle time”, the other students would snicker behind my back. My classmates made fun of me and bullied me. They called me names and terrorized me. At the end of the school year, my teacher invited my parents to have “the talk”, regarding possibly holding me back for another year in the first grade. It was decided…I would be held back for another year in the first grade.