A happy ending for people with a learning problem.

This is a short story about a little boy and a little girl that were born with dyslexia. They were both very dear to me. The little boy grew up and went to school during the 50s and 60s. From the very first day of school, the little boy did not know what the problem was, but he knew that he was a little different than the other students. In those days, they did not give any tests to find out if you had any learning problems. They just assumed that you could keep up with the rest of the class. If you were not able to keep up with the regular class they put you in what they called special education classroom and in some cases held you back a grade. Every day this little boy stumbled through his class lessons and had an extremely hard time even reading his text books. To get a true feeling of what this little boy went through during his years of schooling. Try this, pick up a book any book. Now open it to any page you like. Pick out a chapter to read. Now read that chapter out loud one word at a time, taking a pause after you say each word. When you are done reading the chapter out loud one word at a time, with the pause after each word, now think about it, do you remember exactly what you had read in that chapter? Or was it just a bunch of words? This is how that little boy read everything, from the first day in school, to the day he graduated from high school. He read one word at a time. Never putting the words into a full sentence. Sometimes he would have to read one chapter repeatedly just to understand what the character was all about. He always knew there was something wrong, but he did not know exactly what. The other kids seemed to enjoy reading he did not understand why. He always had this feeling that other kids went to school and extra day and he missed that day they learn something that he did not learn. Over the years, he learned how to hide his problem, he never admitted to anyone that he could not read. Do not feel too sorry for this little boy. Yes, he could not read and he could not spell, but he discovered at an early age that he could do something, others could not do. He had the ability to look at things differently. To give you an example, if you were to walk into a furniture store and you look at a table you would just see a table. This little boy would look at that same table and see exactly how it was built. He had the ability to look at almost anything and in his mind, he could see an actual drawing of how that item was made. This gave him a completely different perspective on life. Granted he could not read, and he could not spell very well, but he could build almost anything. Later in life, He used to tell people I can build anything you want me to build, just tell me what it is, and I will make it. He did not even need drawings to build something the drawings that he needed were already in his head. Most of the time he could see the drawings in 3D, which gave him an advantage over other builders. Now it was bad enough that this little boy suffered most of his life with dyslexia, when he was in the tenth grade, and just starting high school, he had an accident and ended up with a badly broken leg. His injuries were so bad that he missed half a year of his 10th grade. Again, do not feel sorry for this young man over the years he has learned to cope with many problems. Remember he managed to hide the fact that he suffered from dyslexia all this time from everybody that knew him. He was not going to let a little thing like a broken leg stop him. Even though he missed half of his 10th grade year he was determined to graduate with the rest of his class, and he did. He graduated from high school in 2 1/2 years. He made up the credits that he missed in the first half of his 10th grade by going to summer school for two years. You may be thinking right now, thank goodness, this poor little guy is out of school and his learning problems are over. Not so fast, it s now 1970 and the government and the little thing called the draft. This guys problems were not over yet. He was still suffering from the effects of the broken leg that did not heal right. When he got his draft notice, he stepped up and did his time in the military as expected from every young man in those days. He not only suffered through the physical pain from his bad leg, he also did not tell anyone he suffered from dyslexia all the time he was in the military. He completed his military duty with an Honorable discharge. Lets skip ahead a little, in this young mans story. A couple years after he completed his Military service, he met a lady that had three kids. It the youngest of the three children, (lets call her Erica), is the other young person, we are going to continue talking about in this story. Shortly after the young man took on the task of taking care of this lady and her children, Erica ask the young man, if she could call him Dad. He said yes to her request, and from that day on, he treated her as if she were his own daughter. It was not long after that, it was time for Erica to start going to school. The young man was proud to take her to school on her first day. This school district had a policy to test all young students, something they did not do for the young man, back in the 1950s. Erica was tested, and found to have dyslexia the same as the young man. Now he was more determined to help her. He did not want her to suffer with schooling like he did. After doing some research he found that there were new teaching methods for young people with dyslexia. Other the years, he went to every parent teacher s conference for her and selected classes that were best suited to help her. In her high school years, he even went so far as to enroll her into another school district that offered a better learning method for people with dyslexia. This required him to take her to school and pick her up every day. He was determined to help Erica with her education. His efforts paid off as she ended up graduating in the top half of her class. The story does not end here, there is a happier outcome for the young man also. Long after the lady and her three children were out of the young mans life, many changes had taken place over the years. The young man is now up in years and doing most of his work on a computer. In case you have not guessed already, I am the young man in this story. I have never told anyone this true story about myself. I am only doing so now, because I found a newly developed Neuroscience formula that has changed my life. I did not know at the time, that a world renown Doctor, was doing a twenty-year research project in one of the worlds top Neuroscience program and found a naturally occurring mixture of bioactive molecules that activate the neuronal connections in the brain to keep them robust and healthy. After taking this new formula every day for two weeks, I received some amazing results. I would like to explain what this new formula did for me. Remember me telling you, I have never read a compete book in my past. At the end of the second week of taking the new formula, I picked up a 350-page book in the morning and by the end of the day had read every page. Get this, not only read the complete book, but understood everything I was reading the first time, and not only that, I could not set the book down until the end. You will never guess what happened the next day. I picked up another 400-page book and read it cover to cover in one day. It was like this new formula opened a whole new world for me. Now I see, the joy of reading that others have known all along. To add more proof of what it has done for me, I wrote this story for you. I have never written anything like this in my life. If you know anyone, young or old that has the same condition that I had, this may help them also. Everyone is different .. it may help or not, but if you really care about them, it would be a shame if they did not give it a try. In closing I will state that it has changed my life forever. Jim Rattray 128php@gmail.com