Story of my Uooot

[fbhjr]

One of the folks who works with me asked “When did you know you’d be an
engineer?”
The real answer is “There was never a time I didn’t. From the earliest age
I was told I was going to follow in my father’s footsteps.”
But, the first time it might have been more apparent to others was when I
was in kindergarten.
My friend Bill and I were not allowed to go out for recess. We had colds
or some such, I don’t remember what. It wasn’t enough to keep us out of
school, but was enough to keep us from going out and having fun.
So, they left the two of us in the classroom when the teacher and all the
other students went out to the playground. (I don’t think they’d do that
these days…)
Bill and I looked around at the empty classroom and spotted the class snack
of peanut butter and crackers on top of the refrigerator.
“Let’s have our snack now,” I said.
“We can’t get up there,” Bill said.
“Sure we can,” I said.
I took the large building blocks they had, and started building a stair
case with them. The blocks were big about 1’x6”x6” so it didn’t take long.
The teacher and class came back to find us on top of the refrigerator
eating everyone’s snack.
Now to my (then) five year old brain this had the following results.
1) I always got to go our for recess after that.
2) Bill was held back in kindergarten
3) I was put in special needs classes

There was probably more to it then the refrigerator incident. But, that’s
what I remember.

Comments

[morgan-lafaye.livejournal.com]

I woundn't have put you in special needs, I would have put you in some advanced class. Heck you figured out how to use stuff around you to get what you wanted. School then as now is messed up.

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

It was 39 years ago, and just because it seemed that way to me doesn't mean that's the way it happened.
I'm also sure it had a lot to do with my dyslexia.
And, for the first couple of years of it, I thought the special needs class was the advanced class. I didn't figure out they were calling me stupid until 4th grade.

[palusbuteo.livejournal.com]

Yeah...School is messed up.

With my "Math Dyslexia" - I would figure out the problems eventually, figure them out my own way/what made sence to me, and more than not it would take me a bit longer to translitterate information to how I could process it, and provide solution...But apparently this is not how the Books tell you to do it, nor how the Class does it, and since I took more time, they figured I'd be better in the 'slow' classes since 4th grade, and ended up taking Algebra my senior year in HS, when everyone already took that in 7th or 8th grade.

I just remembered now too I apparently had a speech impediment (now that's cruel, have the kid with the impediment try to say 'speech impediment'...And what does my speech have to do with slowing up my feet? What is that some wacky foot-in-mouth joke? anyway) - apparently I talked like Elmer Fudd...So went to a speech therapist in the school I think back in 1st or 2nd grade. Now I talk infront of hundreds of people each year...Rambling away at Mach 1.0 and covering 300 years of history in an hour...With some Latin thrown in there for shits&giggles, But then I *like* it too much *evil*