Learning to talk

[fbhjr]

When I was young I had a lot of trouble communicating with people. It wasn’t a question of words or language or anything.
I just had trouble understand how people thought and they had the same problem with me.
When it came to my teachers, they had no interested in learning how I thought, they expected me to think like them.
I was stubborn about that.

For example, there was one time in first grade that we were given a math test.
It was columns of addition problems.
1+1=
1+2=
1+3=
All the way up to
1+15=
The next column was the same except it was adding 2 each time, after that 3.

I looked over the paper for ones that didn’t fit the pattern. There weren’t any.
So, I just wrote down the sequential numbers without actually doing any addition and brought my test up to the teacher.
Most of the others in the class were still on the first column of questions.

“You can’t be done,” the teacher said. “There hasn’t been enough time.”
I held out my paper with all the answers filled in.
“You must have cheated somehow!” she said.
I was confused as it wasn’t clear to me how that would have been possible.
“The pattern is straightforward,” I said, again holding out the paper.
“OK then, what’s 11 plus 3?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’d have to work that out.”
“But, you expect me to believe you knew it when you wrote it on this piece of paper?”
“I was filling in the pattern,” I said. “I didn’t pay attention to the numbers.”
“So, you don’t know how to do the addition?”
“The pattern is faster.”
“You need to add each one of these individually,” she told me. “Not just copy down numbers.”
“Why would I waste all that time?”
“YOU HAVE TO DO IT THE PROPER WAY!”

I was soon placed in special needs classes.
I did not get through to most of them either.
To be fair, I am quite dyslectic. And, not just for letters in the wrong order. Pretty much anything in any kind of order is difficult for me.

Eventually I came to understand they were calling me stupid, and that made me angry.
So, I changed the way I thought and adapted to their ways.