“Never play cards with a man named Doc.”
~Jim Hunter, teacher
I remember when girls were fat. They seemed like unnecessary extras cast in my adventurous childhood.
Growing up in Tuolumne County, California, my life consisted of building forts, crafting spears, shooting BB guns, playing superheroes with my friends, and discovering new ways to insult me while turning my mother’s hair gray. .
Just before my 10th birthday, my mother, sister and I moved back to the city where I was born. This was a dramatic change; I was in a bigger city with fewer places to play on the dirt, a bigger school, and more of those distracting creatures known as girls.
I hated having to move. I missed my friends and my freedom to play and ride my bike around town. Now I was in a big city with too many rules. There was only one positive aspect, I believed, to my exodus from the paradise of my childhood. At Cherrywood School, I had the best teacher: my hero in elementary education, Mr. Hunter.
In Mr. Hunter’s class, I went back to the adventures of my childhood existence. Some might have considered his teaching methods unconventional; we stood up often as we learned, played, shouted and competed for prizes. My favorite moment was at the end of class, every Friday. We turned off the lights, lit candles, and wrote creative stories. Mr. Hunter initiated and read aloud the introduction to our collective adventure. We were instructed to write for thirty minutes whatever we could think of that would fit the introduction. We were the potential authors of the next chapter. Each week, all of our stories would be collected and one would be chosen to be the next part of the adventure. Oh, how I anticipated every Friday, hoping that my story would be chosen.
As the weeks passed and the school year came to a close, not once did I get to write part of our story in class. Thirty minutes never seemed like enough time to get all my thoughts down on paper, and as creative as I was, many of my stories were never finished.
Although this was a difficult lesson for a fifth grader, it never, in my opinion, dethroned Mr. Hunter as one of the most amazing teachers a child could have. He represented a turning point in my career as a student, but nothing had prepared me for what was about to happen next…
I made some of the best friends in fifth grade. It felt great to be one of the cool kids again, with friends who had some of the same interests as me. I guess the city wasn’t such a bad place after all.
My friends differed from me in one area of life: they all looked like girls to them, and some of them even had girlfriends. This was certainly not part of my plan for my life. I thought girls didn’t fit into the lifestyle of a fifth grader. We were boys, destined to do boy things. I just wanted to play sports, get dirty and on special occasions find things that I could blow up.
I thought everything was going according to plan for me when she arrived. That manipulative creature with beautiful long hair and a cute smile, she entangled me in her web. She brought with her an entourage of two other girls to confront me on the playground. Was caught. I cringed when I was handed a note that reeked of perfume, tainted with glitter and feminine handwriting. I was then slowly tortured as I read the disgusting proposal to have her as my girlfriend. I must have been under a spell, or lost my mind, since I accepted this horrible idea.
I spent the last few weeks of school avoiding her. I think it was my soldier’s instincts telling me when to attack or retreat that kept me safe from their traps. Even as a child, I knew better than to engage in a battle with a girl who was already prepared to win.
On the last day of school, life was bittersweet. I would certainly miss my rock star teacher, but I knew my days as a captive boyfriend were over. Many students cried on the last day of school, when we realized that our time together had just ended. Our days in Mr. Hunter’s class would soon become nothing more than a memory.
The next school year was high school; sixth grade. My friends and I were in the big leagues at Piedmont High School, and my favorite class that year was my creative writing class. My teacher even looked like Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison. One of our first assignments was to write about our experiences in fifth grade. This was a creative writing assignment and we had two weeks to complete it. This was the perfect opportunity to write about that girl who had bullied me in fifth grade, using her girl powers to make me her boyfriend.
After grading the assignments, all the children received theirs with a grade. All the students except one. Me.” My teacher stood there, looking at me over her coke bottle glasses without saying a word, clutching my story in her hand. She looked at the rest of the class, as if she was giving them a non-verbal cue in preparation for my scolding. My mind started racing. Perhaps he had taken it too far? Maybe I shouldn’t have referred to a girl as a creature or a stalker? She said that she was creative. I sat up, nervously anticipating what she was about to say…
“Good morning, class. I want to read this story to all of you. In all my years as a teacher, I have never read a story like this. Not only do I give this story the highest rating, but I send it to the local newspaper to be published.” published”.
Phew! I let out a sigh of relief. And that’s how, in sixth grade, I got published for the first time.
Language arts and all classes related to writing would continue to be my favorite subjects in school. I almost always got “A’s” and received positive encouragement from my teachers about my ability to write. Writing became my profession. I wished, at the time, that I had taken writing classes and dropped all math classes altogether; I hated them.
After finishing high school, I attended Bellarmine College Preparatory, an all-boys school in San Jose. I’d like to point out that while the all-boy dynamic would have been great for elementary school, it was definitely not desirable for me as a teenager.
At Bellarmine, college planning was built into my student schedule from day one. Before applying to colleges, all students had to take the SAT. I was excited to attend college, knowing that my GPA gave me several options; all he had to do was get a good score on the standardized test. I took prep classes. I studied slowly. I bombed
Although Math was not my best subject, I scored in the highest percentile. I scored much lower on the English section. This was devastating. A secret he had kept hidden for years was about to come to light when the test results came out. This was a secret that none of my friends knew. Not even a single teacher knew about it. Ever since I learned to read and write, I struggled with dyslexia.
I couldn’t finish the English section of the exam and I left several answers blank because it took me a long time to read the questions. The sections I was able to complete were close to perfect, but my learning disability was an obstacle in my way to complete the exam. I took the test a couple of times. I could have had a great score, if only I had more time.
I still attended a good university, Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. I did well in most of my classes, but my aspirations to become a professional writer were left on the shelf.
While attending college, I started my own training program working with children. Many of the children I worked with had various levels of autism. I discovered something important during this time in my career. I had a change in my way of thinking when I focused on the strength of each of my clients; the constant focus on strengths helped lessen the impact of their weaknesses.
I related this to my own life. As someone with dyslexia, I knew I had to find a way to combat this weakness. Despite my challenges, I loved reading and learning. I became obsessed with learning about history. I had to practice reading aloud over and over again. On this journey, walking through my own fears and insecurities. I discovered my strengths.
Over the years, I continue to study more now than when I was a student at school. I often speak in public with audiences of all sizes. My passion turned into a career working as a copywriter, curriculum writer, and children’s book author.
In each of us, I believe, on the other side of our weakness there is incredible strength. I am grateful for every opportunity, challenge and failure. I now know that all of them are invaluable contributions to my design and purpose in this life. I write and teach to inspire others, but my mission is to show others how to discover what is great in each other and how they can add value to their world.
Thanks to my hero, Mr. Hunter, the leader in my life who first inspired me to be a creative writer. I have never played cards with a man named Doc, but I have learned to build a life with the cards I was dealt.