The first reader at school was a boring book called Fun with Dick and Jane. I thought it was such a boring book, so I read it straight through to the back and then when the teacher called on me to read, I didn't know where the student next to me had left off, so she thought I couldn't read.
Once we had finished that book, she let us choose books from her classroom collection to take home to read. (it was a 2 room school with first, second, and third grade in one room) So, I chose Black Beauty. Because it was about a horse. It took me a month or two to read it at home, with help from my parents with the hard words.
Meanwhile, because I was dyslexic and transposed letters in writing class, the teacher thought I still couldn't read - because I kept spelling the as teh - even when I could look at the word before writing it. Despite my spelling problems, I have written 45 books which were published. (wrote more that haven't been published - yet.) Plus I worked for years a library where I had to memorize the Dewey Decimal system because when I read the number on the computer screen, the numbers transposed themselves when I wrote them down to go to the shelf to get the book people wanted.
Because I was often late to school (it was a block away, but I often got involved watching caterpillars or other bits of nature or building materials), she tried to use a paper clock face to show me what time I should leave home in order to get to school on time. She was confused why I couldn't read the clock in the schoolroom. It was because the Grandfather clock in my house used Roman Letters. My mom and the teacher had a good laugh about that.
