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Truthfully, I hated books, reading, and school. I used to fake sick so that I could stay home, and if that didn't work, I tried to miss the bus, and if that didn't work, I threatened to vomit in the nurse's office. It's quite a compliment to my parents. I had a happy little home, which is something only some have. 

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I was not the typically portrayed 'smart kid'. I tried hard, but I was awkward in many ways, and...

 

I could not read.

 

I remember 1st grade - sitting with a lump in my throat next to a lovely girl named Lauren, who was assigned to help me sound out words from Fox' N Sox. 

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I was placed in the special reading classes in 2nd grade. I hated standing up in front of the class when we were excused to follow Ms. Valley to the Reading Alligator's room.

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I hated that room. But I loved Ms. Valley, and later in life, I grew to love Amanda Pig, Owl at Home and Grasshopper on His Way, like my dearest friends - I have always enjoyed bowls of hot pea soup and buttered toast by a fire like Mr. Owl.

 

3rd grade wasn't any better. My mom sat with me for hours trying to help me remember to spell words like abundance using mnemonic tools of every kind. The words just didn't make sense in my brain!

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I hated reading, but not being read to. Despite my loathing of library books that sat dusty on my wicker chair every week, my mom read to us every evening on the living room floor under lamp light. She preferred non-fiction books, especially those revolving around horses or cats. 

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I won't get started on math - only to say that I had a few kind teachers who never gave up on me - and one 6th grade math teacher with a stiff brown mustache that handed me a test with a big red F and said, "If you can't figure this out, you're re never going to make it in life."

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So, now I hated numbers too. But I did love stories. I drew pictures of stories all day, though I couldn't spell any words. I even had a grand idea to try and sell my illustrations. So, I filled my rusty red wagon with hand-stirred lemonade, grabbed a stack of art from my portfolio, and hauled a card table to the end of the block. One poor, dehydrated runner reluctantly drank a dixie cup of rusty lemonade, dropped a quarter, and went on his way. 

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After a few disappointing customers-less hours, a big wind swept my paintings in a vortex of white printer paper and Crayola marker. I have never littered on purpose, but I left those paintings to be caught in the thicket of trees and dandelions surrounding a pond. I ran home without the wagon and hid in my room.

 

That was it. No more words. No more numbers. No more art.

 

Then, one day, my kind librarian, Mrs. Smith, questioned my loathing of books. I remember she asked something about what I do during my free time, to which I probably answered - painting, decorating my dollhouse, pretending to be anything but a human, and looking for toads by the pond down the road.

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Mrs. Smith smiled, led me to the fantasy / sci-fi section​ and told me to peruse and choose. I found Queen Zixi of Ix by L. Frank Baum.

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I went home, sat in my wicker chair, decided that my problem with words would not dictate my future, and struggled through every chapter. But I finished! My brain hurt, but I loved it. After years of struggling through books, the words came more quickly - I started to see them, not in a sequence of jumbled symbols, but each word as a meaningful picture to memorize. 

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I continued to read every book on the fantasy shelf, and I've had a book in hand ever since. I've always been an old lady at heart, and cups of herbal tea, puzzles, and cross-eyed cats are some of my favorite friends.

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Words and I are friends again, too. But if Ms. Valley had told me I'd read for a living someday, I would have set Amanda Pig on the table and walked out of that room. 

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As for math, I got part way through a biology degree but got stuck in the thick of Chemistry 105, where both my math and science teachers realized that I was dyslexic. I had never heard of that before, but they helped me through that year. Eventually, I let the pre-med people have fun with titrations and the summing of three cubes. I got a supremely worthwhile degree in child development and a minor in English education. Nevertheless, I have used both to my advantage. 

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DYSLEXIA AND AUDIOBOOK NARRATING

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Dyslexia is a learning disability with reading, reading comprehension, spelling, and writing. It is difficult for people with dyslexia to read at a good pace without making mistakes. Dyslexia was not commonly diagnosed or even discussed when I was a child.

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My experience with dyslexia was a constant flip-flopping of letters or numbers. I could not see a sequence of letters or numbers in the correct order, which made early reading and math challenging and frustrating.

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Over the years, I could memorize most English words and di-graphs (letter combinations). Once I started memorizing, my reading improved exponentially. I had to train my mind, however -

instead of reading a word from left to right, I read words in di-graph chunks or saw the entire word as a whole picture, not as individual letters. In a way, it makes me faster at reading. 

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This disability has posed a few problems with becoming a narrator. Just because I'm fast at decoding a sentence and comprehension doesn't mean I don't make mistakes. I make many errors reading out loud. I have to remind my brain to take it slowly, and once I get into a flow, I can read mistake free for quite some time. Reading in the evenings is the best time when my brain is sharp.

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Math has been a separate issue. There are no di-graphs in math or sentences to decode—just a random series of numbers. I still stare at a phone number or verification code like it's a snake.

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Read here about how audiobooks are helping dyslexic students read thousands of pages a year.