Brush With Dyslexia

This is a story about a failed educational system and one person’s triumph over adversity inflicted by that failed system. Above is a picture of my brother, the hero of my childhood. He was the baby of the family until I showed up twelve years later.  I adore him.

At some point in his education the Chatham, Massachusetts school system decided he had dyslexia. As a small child I didn’t know exactly what this meant but as soon as I could read I was helping him decipher things. I even had to dial the phone for him because he was convinced he would dial a wrong number as he couldn’t read the keys correctly. I loved helping my brother. It made me feel useful and special.

I never doubted what the school said because my brother and my parents didn’t. In retrospect, I should have. In middle school, classes were divided into high, medium and low. The high class were the brightest children and the low class consisted of the slowest learners.  I was placed in the low class where I consistently received good grades. In high school I tested within the genius range and made the National Honor Society. This didn’t make me angry until I was in college where I realized I could have done so much more had my middle school years not been wasted being taught down to. I suspect it is because my family was poor and Chatham, being a very classist town, assumed poor children must have lower than average intelligence. I still feel stupid and believe I am not performing up to my potential. Try as I might, the building blocks weren’t there and I doubt I will outgrow the insecurity.

My brother went onto technical school where he earned his high school diploma and became the most talented carpenter and jack-of-all-trades I’ve ever met. There was nothing that man couldn’t do with his hands.

Years later, my brother called me to tell me he had just tested at a Grade 15 level. I don’t remember what he was testing for, and doubt I asked, because I was floored.  He tested as a junior in college. Further, he told me, they determined he was not dyslexic. After that, he started reading and writing. Similar to me, the ground work he should have had was not there but he did as best he could, miles beyond anything he had done the first thirty-five years of his life. In conversations after he lost the dyslexic label, he would casually mention something he read and I could hear the pride in his voice.  I can not think pride is always a sin when someone overcomes what he did.  I was proud of him, too. Once that label was removed, he never looked back. He didn’t say, “I can’t.” He could and he did and it only made me love him more.