Written for Juk-writes-4-U. A huge shout-out goes to my sister, Margaret, whose ideas and college essay I may have co-opted.
Disclaimer: If you're reading this, know that I am neither RIB nor Rick Riordan. If I were RIB, there would be a Warblers show and Blaine probably would have gone back to McKinely.
"You're not stupid, David, and if anybody tells you different, they're lying." His grandmother liked to remind him that he wasn't stupid every day after school as they'd mix biscuit dough or rub salt and seasoning into a chicken or cut vegetables for dinner.
He didn't know what she meant, "You're not stupid." Because he knew he was.
All the other kids in his class could read and write and spell. They could pick up a book, and somehow the letters on the page would into a story like magic. David couldn't turn letters into magic. If someone else read the words to him, the story would leap off the page, but he couldn't do it himself. He could barely work his way through the "Easy Reader" books. Not the ones about Gorillas or the Civil War or Star Wars. He could barely manage the ones about bears that liked to chew gum.
His parents had picked up on the problem early, and they'd gotten him help. Twice a week, while his classmates went to "specials", he went to the resource room for phonics and to practice his handwriting.
He learned to spell by rote memorization alone. It was literally muscle memory, tracing each letter carefully. Unfortunately, it didn't matter because his handwriting was deplorable. He knew what the letters were supposed to look like, but he couldn't make his hands draw them.
When he'd see his brother, Dante on weekends, he'd just get teased. "Stupid!" Dante would say, holding out a book. Usually, the older boy would pick from a shelf in their mother's office filled with Shakespeare or poetry. Once, he selected a text in French. "Show me you're not a dummy and read this!"
David was eleven and a half when his parents took him to interview for a spot at Dalton Academy. It was one of the only things the agreed on. He was excited and nervous and sullen. Dante had interviewed four years before, and been turned away. And, for some reason, his parents though David had a better chance than his older brother. David, who still got pulled out of regular English three times a week to go to resource room and practice his spelling and reading. David, who asked his seven year old cousin to write names on his Christmas gifts for him, because her handwriting was neater than his. David, who misspelled two second grade words in his last school essay: "butiful" and "sercet". David, who had an IQ of 139. David, who was functionally illiterate.
He was afraid, the first time he put on that Dalton tie himself. He'd had a trial run at his grandma's nursing home, where she smiled at him and helped him tie his new tie in a crisp Windsor knot and told him how handsome he was. Then, she'd called him Jefferson and he'd almost broken down crying. Jefferson was his father's name. This time, though, as he pulled the Windsor knot snug against his throat, he was sure someone would see through him. They'd know he was a fraud. That he was too stupid to be here.
At the breakfast table, he noticed how many of the boys were already reading. His roommate, Callum, was flipping between the three newspapers spread in front of him. It didn't matter that Callum was only reading the sports section, it seemed very grown up to David. Wes, the eighth grader from across the hall who'd woken David and Callum with an official sounding knock on the door, was reading a book with a black jacket with a pair of pale hands clutching an apple. Down the table, a dark haired boy called Thad was staring slack-jawed at a box of cereal as though he'd never seen Frosted Mini Wheats before. David couldn't actually be sure Thad was reading the box, but he was pretty sure Thad could. He felt left out, and the breakfast settled hard against his stomach.
English was his first class, and he was flat out afraid. He kept hearing a word over and over in his head. Elementary school was the first place he'd heard it. He knew it was a bad word as soon as he heard it. It wasn't the word itself. It didn't have the crisp cadence in his mouth that other curse words did (fucker fucker fucker). And, it wasn't bad enough that it had to be whispered by the kids who hung out past the jungle gym. It was an every day bad word, one that you could say as you walked past someone getting in line for lunch. You said it in an undertone, so the teachers wouldn't hear you, but you said it anyway. "Retard."
His first day at Dalton was the first time he heard the word used a different way. They were sitting in music class. He was in the chorus, because even though he could play the piano and make noise on a trombone, his parents wanted him to focus on his homework and not constantly remind him to practice. They were going over a new piece of music (in all honesty, all the music was new to David), and as he was sight-reading on an "Ooo", he noticed a word above the staff. RETARD. The word was there black and white. He knew there was a no tolerance policy for bullying at Dalton, but he was convinced someone knew his secret. He leaned over, but Wes' score had the same notation.
He leaned over to ask the boy next to him, Thad, what the word meant, but Mr. Peady caught him. "Something to share with the class, Mr. Sullivan?"
"Umm…" David was nervous. "The word in the corner, 'Retard', what does it mean?"
Peady smiled. "We slow down there," he said. "It's from the latin, retardare, which means to slow."
David smiled nervously, and the class went back to singing.
David had come a long way from when he'd first started at Dalton.
Somewhere in the middle of eight grade, on choir tour around Eastern Michigan, reading had just clicked. It had been the Percy Jackson books that did it. He was struggling through The Lightening Thief because Thad was sick of making references and David not getting them. Then, somewhere around the time that Percy, Annabeth, and Grover started battling Medusa, something changed. Suddenly, the words made sense as words, rather than just units of letters. David didn't talk to anyone the entire bus ride back for East Lansing.
His handwriting never got better, but he learned to compensate. No one on the Warbler's council his junior year would let him near a pen. Even though David was the "secretary" to Wes' president and Thad's vice, Thad took notes and David backed up the chief. His biology partner labeled their diagrams. His physics teacher had passed him a few handwriting worksheets, and they'd helped marginally, but not enough. So, he typed most of his assignments. David found that when he typed, he could actually let ideas flow, rather than being constrained by the act of writing itself.
Spelling, too was a challenge. But, between Thad, Callum, Roberto, Kurt and Nick, he managed not to embarrass himself too much. The incident involving his favorite constipation, the Big Dipper, was one that none of the other boys were soon to let him forget.
But, aside from merciless ribbing, the Warblers appreciated David. He was the go-to guy if you needed something taken care of. He might not have had Wes' stomach for blood, but if you were sick, he'd make sure that someone emailed your professors, called your parents, and took care of your chores. He'd been the one to organize the driving pool to the GAP when Blaine had wanted to preform, and convince Peady they needed a bus to go to Breadstix at Valentine's day. He'd spent hours on the phone to get a real foam machine, beach balls and the girls from Crawford. But, it had been worth it. He'd gotten two dates, and Kurt and Blaine had stopped circling each other.
Now, as a senior, he sat getting ready to write his first assignment for English. The task was to write a practice college application essay. The topic was free form, but it had to be less than 1000 words and unique. David stared at the blinking cursor in front of him. | Then, he slowly began to write.
The first time I heard the word, I was in elementary school. I knew it was bad as soon as someone said it. Not because I knew what it meant, just because of the way they said it…
David might have been dyslexic, but he wasn't stupid.
A/N: First, Happy Whatever December Holiday you celebrate to you! (Belated Bodhi day/Hanukah/Yule, Christmas/Boxing Day, Kwanza, or shortest/longest day of the year).
Sometime in early May, Juk-writes-4-u asked me to do something about Sam's dyslexia. Except that Sam magically wasn't dyslexic after about the first episode where he got introduced. Ryder came in this season, and he was profoundly dyslexic, and struggling. I grew up struggling with reading, writing and spelling (okay, I still struggle with spelling). My sister and brother had a worse time. We weren't stupid… we just learned differently. Some of the things David went through were stolen directly from my childhood… My sister literally went from not being able to read to reading overnight. (Although the first few days, we were concerned she diarrhea because of the amount of time she spent hiding in the bathroom reading Tamora Pierce). I've turned in multiple essays with the wrong (hilariously so) word included And, my sister's college essay was about the word "retard" meaning slow and learning differently. I wanted David to have the same experience.
I promise I'm thinking about the other stories I need to finish, but remember that feedback makes my muse's ego puff up and convinces me that I should actually put his stories on paper.