Story I wrote about George Patton and his dyselxia. I hope you enjoy. By Sam Sagmiller

A story I wrote about George Patton and his dyslexia.  I hope you enjoy.  By Sam Sagmiller

From:DyslexiaMyLife.org

I loved to listen to my dad's World War II stories, perhaps as much as he loved to tell them. Many a Sunday after church, stomach pleasantly full of roast beef or fried chicken, I would sit back in my chair at the round oak table in our dining room, ready to be transported into a world of heroes. Often my father's stories were about General George Patton, whom Dad idolized.  "General Patton was a great general and a great

American," he would intone, telling the story of how Patton or the tale of Patton working with the troops, treating each one as his son and they looked up to him as if he was their dad. My dad also talked about the time he met or should I saw say General Patton while he was in the army at the end of World War II, How Patton commanded everyone's attention, bigger than life as Patton passed by in his jeep. Fully of integration and determination of what had to been done.

I wanted to be just like General Patton.  Playing war with the neighborhood kids, armed with snowball artillery, I would strike a confident pose atop a hill of snow, a glint of assurance in my eyes, imagining that I was Patton, about to lead my troops forward to overtake the enemy.  But the pride I felt on this pretend battlefield was a fleeting emotion, one I rarely experienced outside of play.

For I had dyslexia, a learning disability that made it hard for me to read and write. At school, I was engaged in my own private war, one where victories were few. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't seem to catch on to reading and writing, that seemed to come so easily to other students my age.

Every day I would be banished from the classroom to go to my special reading class.  I watched the second hand circling the clock at the front of the classroom, hoping that for once, the teacher would forget to dismiss me, dreading the moment when she would announce, "Will the slower readers please join Ms. White in the hall outside the classroom."  Rising from my seat, I would steel myself to ignore the whispered potshots of other children:  "Hey stupid, time for your idiot class"; "Will all the dummies meet Ms. White outside?" 

Hanging my head in shame I walked slowly down the aisle, joining other members of the special group, as the teacher paused in her lesson, awaiting our departure.  The other special students and I followed our reading teacher toward the janitor's storage room, the only space available for us, where we would meet amidst mops and brooms, in an atmosphere pervaded by the smell of cleaning fluid.  As we trooped down the hall, we maintained silence, hoping not to attract attention from children in other classes.  Dispirited captives, we felt as if we were about to face a firing squad.

The best method for teaching dyslexic individuals to read is phonics, helping them link the letters on a page with sounds.  But phonics was out of fashion in my school.  Instead, throughout the years my special Ed teachers experimented with the latest flashcards, slides, and games, in an effort to find the magical teaching tool that would help me perform like the rest of the class. One year I was even given a special desk, placed to one side of the regular classroom, a desk surrounded by walls so high that I could neither see out nor be seen as I listened to tapes drilling me in subjects like grammar and spelling.  "See, Sam, isn't this nice?" said the teacher enthusiastically.  " You've got your own private study nook, to help you concentrate and not be distracted." But the teacher's sales pitch did nothing to soften the humiliation I felt in being isolated like a P.O.W.

Most painful were my experiences with teachers who viewed me as stupid, lazy, and inconvenient.  But these experiences paled beside the terroristic tactics of one student teacher assigned to my reading group.  This teacher sometimes grew so frustrated with the reading difficulties that he would grab us out of our chairs and shake us, his red, tense face pinched into a scowl.

One day, when it came to my turn to read, I encountered a word I could not decipher, no matter how hard I tried.  The teacher, already inflamed by the mistakes of another student, began pounding his fists on my desk, and then grabbed my shoulders, yelling at the top of his voice, "You are going to read that word!  You don't want to know what is going to happen if you can't!"  I was in shock.  I had never seen him so upset.  My heart was pounding, and tears began streaming down my face.  I bent my head to my book and tried again to read the word, but it was no use. 

Letting go of my shoulders, the teacher strode over to the desk and picked up a pair of scissors.  "One last time.  What is that word, Sam?" he demanded as he returned to tower over me, grasping the scissors like a knife.  I tried again.  Again I failed.  A streak of silver, driven by the movement of my teacher's arm, flashed through the air toward my desk.  I jerked my hand away, and the scissors in my teacher's hand lodged in the desktop, where my hand had been only seconds before.   Releasing the scissors, my teacher lifted me violently out of my seat, holding me eye-to-eye with him, two feet in the air.  I heard my shirt rip and felt an unlaced shoe drop from my foot.  "Now look what you made me do!" he barked accusingly.  Then he threw me back into my seat, kicked open the door, and stalked out.

Luckily, when I returned to my regular classroom, the teacher there spotted my torn shirt and tear-stained face and persuaded me to tell her what had happened.  As a result, the student-teacher who attacked me was never allowed to teach again.  But the damage to my self-esteem and sense of safety had already been done.  More than ever, I looked at school as a war zone.

 Every afternoon, I returned home from school feeling I had lost another battle.  Every evening, I took my dad's war book from the bookshelf and turned straight to the picture of General Patton.  How I wished he would come alive from the pages and lead me to victory.  How I wished I could be like him, strong, fearless, and triumphant.  And then my hopeless tears would begin.  "You'll never be like him, with your dumb old dyslexia," I told myself.  I could never even be fit for his command, wounded as I already was.

I finished High School by the skin of my teeth, but I learned to play it off as if I was just the class clown and I was too cool to study and c and d were ok. Not surprisingly, I guess, when I was older I did find my way into the military, serving for seven years with the National Guard Army.  I found the training of the armed forces to be easy, and it worked well for me despite my dyslexia. The armed forces use hand-on training with instructions, you learn and do it, one step at a time.  I heard something once that summed this up best, you tell me, I will forget, You show me I might learn and if you involved me, I will remember.

It was while I was in the National Guard that I got my wish.  I learned that I am like General Patton.  Talking with one of the CO's in the army of a weekend meeting, who was an army history buff, he informed me that General Patton was dyslexic.  The CO did not know I was dyslexic but must have guessed ad my face turned to shock. The Co went on to tell me, "He was dyslexic, had a hell of a time in school when he was a kid because reading and writing were so hard for him.  Flunked out the first time he went to West Point, and had to reapply for admission and made it the second time."  Upon hearing this, I stood staring at the speaker, my mouth agape.  Then I broke into laughter, hooting until tears sprang from my eyes.  I suddenly felt such relief and joy. As my laughter subsided, I realized that I was also feeling another emotion, one that had been missing from my life.  I was feeling hopeful.

George Patton struggled with reading and writing as a kid, but he was gifted with superb analytical skills.  I realized that I had good analytical skills, too--even back in school, I had delighted in figuring out how to work a new learning toy before the student teacher could.  George Patton had made an outstanding success of his life.  Maybe I could do well, too. Inspired by my new knowledge about Patton, I returned to school.

From:DyslexiaMyLife.org