As you can see, my impeccable fashion sense is developing. Funny enough, so is my disdain for school.
I hated grade four. Just fucking hated it. I was getting dragged out of classes for speech therapy, which was going nowhere, getting the shit kicked out of me at recess while teachers watched and just having a miserable time – quite a bit of it spent in the principal’s office.
And my math totally failed me. I’d been good at it until we hit multiplication. Had a hard time but got it. But division . . . I still can’t do that shit. And not for lack of trying. I remember staying in at lunch to try to get it. Never happened.
Mrs. Vondracek says: “Ryan’s attitude has grown increasingly defiant as the term progressed.” She’s right. It did.
Speech therapy threw me over the edge. No one likes to be singled out by authorities in front of their peers. This happened regularly for me. It pissed me off because I just wanted to fit in. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d been making progress but I wasn’t. My speech was actually getting worse. I’d stopped answering questions in class or making presentations. Doing that just invited mockery. So I quit speech therapy, quit trying at school and quit trying to fit in. It’s like my Nan always says: “If you’re going to be hanged for stealing a sheep, you might as well shag it too.”
