Growing Up Disabled

The ABCs, those seemingly innocent symbols of language mastery, played coy with me. They were like mischievous sprites, rearranging themselves into confusing patterns whenever my gaze lingered too long. Every attempt to corral them into neat rows on my notebook resulted in a whimsical dance of letters, a choreography that only my eyes seemed unable to follow. The class would erupt in laughter as my sentences, intended to be orderly prose, meandered across the page like rebellious rebels avoiding capture.

Numbers on the chalkboard, those elusive entities that seemed to possess a secret language, became my own enigmatic puzzle. While my classmates effortlessly deciphered the mathematical code, I found myself lost in a numerical labyrinth. Multiplication tables, in particular, formed an alliance against me, each equation a clandestine meeting conspiring to baffle my understanding. The result? A charming wobble in my stride, a unique gait that set me apart in a crowd of academic sprinters.

But oh, the laughter! When the teacher, a benevolent maestro orchestrating our academic symphony, would call upon me to read aloud, my words embarked on a whimsical journey of their own. Sentences became merry-go-rounds, and punctuation marks engaged in a mischievous tango. Commas pirouetted at the end of lines, and periods seemed to forget their designated positions. The classroom, once a haven of solemn learning, transformed into a theater of amusement, with my linguistic acrobatics taking center stage.