Disability

           Wow, this is my first time. Wonder if it'll be weird like the first time you kiss a girl or the first time you fuck a girl. Wonder if it'll be like that, but less glamorous. I know what I'm getting into. I walk through the door, books all on the shelves arranged by the decimal systems. They used to have card catalogs, but now it's all computerized. Thank God. I can find what I'm looking for or know they don't have it in one minute instead of 50 minutes. But, that's not why I'm here. I talk to the librarian at the front desk. She smiles which changes the tone of her voice. She takes me to a back room that has a door so it can be isolated. I knew what I was getting into, but . . .

           The first man walks in. He's a black adult, a little heavy-set, but who am I to judge? I ask him his name which is Joe. Average Joe, that's how I'll remember his name. “So, what are you hoping to accomplish in this class?”

           Then, Joe says the rest of his family is smart. His one brother is a doctor, his other brother an accountant, and a sister who's a lawyer. But, this man struggled in school because he had trouble with reading, but he wants to go back to school, get his G.E.D., go to college, and be like everyone else.” I ask him if reading was what kept him from doing that and he said it was. There was a longer wait than I expected for the next clients, so I decided to have Joe read a kid's book to see what level he's at.

           Joe read out loud: “The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss.” But while Joe read I noticed things like instead of pussy cat, he said dussy cat. Then bussy cat, and qussy cat, “Houston, we have a problem”. I noticed similar mistakes when he was reading and asked him to write out a few words, which he misspelled. How can I teach someone with dyslexia who hasn't been diagnosed with dyslexia. I decide to wait until his Mom picks him up to talk about it with her.

*

           A woman enters the room with a dog and the dog has on a coat that says, “I'm working right now, please don't pet me”. “What's your name?” I ask and she tells me it's Jennifer. I ask her if she can try to read “Dr. Seuss,” but she explains she's visually impaired and she wants to learn braille so she can read like anyone else. And I don't know what to do. I offer to read her the book, but she refuses since she wanted to learn to read. I introduce her to Joe, but am unsure what to do with her. I don't know braille.

*

           A Latino man comes in with a companion and the man states he's doing well with English, but wants to learn to read English. He recites the alphabet and we start reading the book. He mispronounces words like cough, philosophy, sweetheart. These are the kinds of words most foreigners screw up and I think I can help him. I explain the basics of phonetics. To think about the context of the sentence to see if the meaning and/or word can be inferred. He listens and nods, but I'm unsure if his English is good enough yet to understand. 

*

           Then, a woman brought her younger son in and explained he had a condition called aphasia. He could understand what we're saying, but we can't understand what he's saying. So, I try giving him the Seuss book and ask him to read it to me, but all I hear is glossolalia. The mother asks the son if he understood what he read and he nods yes. She then asks if he was able to pronounce the words and he nods yes. The mother smiles and they both leave. 

*

           A senior citizen who's male comes in. He has kyphosis and looks pale. He sits down and I ask him to read the book to me and he tries, but he has to put the book almost against him face to read it. I suggested he may need reading glasses. He smiled and said he would do that. 

*

           They kept coming one by one with problems they all thought I could solve, but since they weren't kids, it was harder. People who don't understand, people with disabilities, people forced to come there by their relative or their schools. No one likes to look or feel like a fool and when we read out and mispronounce a word, read slow, or can't read, we look and feel like idiots. We're afraid to look up words we don't know like “juxtaposition” since we're afraid others will think we're stupid if we ask what this word means when everyone else knows what it means. Nobody wants to be the outcast idiot. No one loves that person. They get spit on, beaten up, teased, told they have kooties.

           And that's why I decided to start this free tutoring program. To help the outcasts become recast. But, it's a lot harder than I thought. I don't know how to fix dyslexia or blindness. I'm not Jesus Christ. I'm just a guy who cares.

           I had people look out the window when they didn't know how to pronounce a word and I told them to look at the page. The words are on the page, not out the window. I had people slam their fists on the table, people throw the book at the wall, people cry, shout, punch, because they want to be like their peers. But, they're not like their peers. They are the outcasts, the untouchables, the people who wind up with gum in their hair, or accidentally start a fire since they can't read the directions. People learn the ABCs in preschool or kindergarden. Some kids can even do it backwards. But these adults can't even do it forward or understand the simple plot, because they're disabled. But, when you really think about it, we're all disabled. If you wear corrective lenses, you're disabled. If you have a limp, you're disabled. So I keep teaching the best I can, which isn't good enough. I'm disabled too.  

           See, when I was young, I got into a fight and hit my head and I was never the same after that. People teased me. But thank God I could still read. But, I talked to others with brain damage and they couldn't read. I felt bad for them. They'd never amount to anything. And that's why I made it my life mission to help these people learn how to read. That's why.