Teachers had no patience with a child that dared to slow down their teaching curriculum. "You're going to be held back if something doesn't change." they would tell me. As if I was purposely being disobedient by having dyslexia. It didn't take long for my mother to find out about the situation. Although she was furious with my teachers, she reassured me things would get better. The next day, she presented me with a gift. It came with no flashy wrapping paper or bulky ribbons, no card that might have a few dollars in it. I had not even opened the box, and already I was disappointed. At the time, I looked at her "gift" as an insult. I was not so stupid that I needed Hooked on Phonics, I thought. Although I did put up an impressive show of shrugging off the gift, I eventually came around and decided to give this new aid a try. Within weeks, I was reading far better than any of the other children in my class. The confused and jealous looks of my peers fueled my desire to keep practicing with Hooked on Phonics, although I would never tell the others how I was progressing so quickly.
Coming into middle school, I was terrified. Although I had conquered my fear of reading out loud by this point, this would be a completely different environment. As I slinked into my classroom, I took a brief glance around, trying to get a quick overview of the people I would have to compete with. After all I went through in elementary school, this is how I began to view English class, a competition. Many of the students were sitting in their desks, looking around in amazement as if this were the first time they had been in a classroom. I saw a few people toward the back of the room that appeared to be sleeping. How a person could fall asleep in a room that was well below the freezing point and had such an overbearing stench of fresh paint, I could never understand. I took the only empty seat, across from a girl I knew from elementary school.