On Being 17

“On Being 17, Bright, and Unable to Read”, David Raymond describes how complicated his life was living with dyslexia. At a very short age he had been told that he reads at a fourth grade level, his classmates had teased and led him to believe that he was dumb. During kinder garden he wasn’t able to do a lot of things that other classmates could do like read his own name, talk as well as others kids or make friends. Despite the efforts of their teachers and parents to encourage him to keep trying he always doubted himself in paragraph 5th line1, “When I couldn’t read the world on the board they’d say “Come on, David you know the world.”Only I didn’t “. David was the target by his peers that took every opportunity to make fun of him as he shows in paragraph 5th line 4, “They make fun of me in every chance they got, asking me to spell cat or something like that”. His was forced by his parents to go to a camp for children with reading disabilities which David found later very helpful. Looking for answers his parents found out that David had dyslexia he was very confused and embarrassed with the whole situation as we can see on paragraph 7th, “it didn’t help much when they stuck a fancy name onto it – I was only in second grade – and I was ashamed to talk about it “. Since he was diagnosed with dyslexia he had to get things done in a different way, whenever he had homework he had to go to special education room to get help or at home one of his parents will have to read or record his homework for him to get done. All along the story David had shared with us very rough times about his life, he had struggles with bullies, reading, writing, his own fears and a disconcerting future. Unfortunately he had to go through all since he was a little kid, spending twice the time to be done with his homework, or spending time apart from his family to go to a camp or even change the only school that he knows since he was a kid.