How quickly situations could turn around

Many people see me as a star, a beautiful shimmering star, but that was in sports only. Academically I was sloth. No one knew what was wrong with me, not even my parents. I had dyscalculia, which simply means that I had difficulties in understanding numbers. I was a badminton player, the best in my school actually. In Brooklyn high school, your grades must be reasonable before you could participate in any sporting activities. My remarkable performance in badminton made the school reconsider my position in the school badminton team. Dyscalculia wasn't a common defect and so no one would have suspected. I kept having straight F's in my mathematics tests, class works and examinations. My other theoretical subjects helped to cover up.

I wasn't dumb or daft, my mind just couldn't carry numbers. I kept living my life. I turned eighteen and no one still knew. I didn't even know what was wrong with me either. One day, our coach brought a report from the school management. They said that the sports had taken my mind away from educational activities and so if I didn't sit up, I'd be benched. This news was heartbreaking because I loved playing badminton. I had won so many medals for the school and now they want to make me a substitute player? That wasn't fair at all. I went home and told my parents, they promised to look into it and so I relaxed. The weekend came, I went about all my normal activities until a point where I met a man. He asked for the time on my wristwatch and I was hooked. 'The time is umm… it is ...the time is'. I kept stammering. He noticed that something was wrong and so he asked, 'is everything okay with you? What's wrong, can't you see the time?' I was gripped with shame.

^pexels

A big girl like me couldn't read what the time was. I told the man that I had a problem with understanding numbers. That's when he said it could be 'dyscalculia'. I never heard of such a word or defect. I asked him what it was and he explained everything to me, the most interesting part was when he said that there was a remedy for it. I told him not to let anyone know that I had such a defect. Three weeks later, I met the man again, he told me he could help with the remedy but he couldn't do that if I chose to keep it secret. I saw his point. First, I asked him what the remedy was? Then how long would it take? He said he'd give answers to all my questions when I told my parents about the defect. I told him to give me a week to summon up courage to relay the message to my parents. When I told my parents the news, they acted as expected. First, they didn't know what dyscalculia was and when I explained everything to them, they panicked.

They were so restless, thinking of what to do next, yelling at me for keeping it a secret and what not. I tried calming them down then I told them about the man who had the remedy, they said I could bring him home to begin the process. He came home the next day and started helping me. I had to suspend school for a term. Mark was his name, he was about twenty-nine years old. He devised a means to teach me numbers. The thing with dyscalculia was that it couldn't be cured but it could be curbed and Mark tried all he could to help me with it. I don't know why he took special interest in me, but it helped me a lot. Days went by, weeks too. After about a month or two of using pencils and objects in my environment to count, I got acquainted with numbers. It was still confusing but with the right amount of dedication and hard work I felt I was good to go.

I resumed school again and I started improving in my math lessons. For the first time in my life, I saw a D on my math script after a test. I was incredibly happy. I took it home and showed my parents. I called Mark and told him the good news. He was happy for me but he said I could do better. Consequently, I kept pushing and I rose to a C. More and more joy. I went to my school's coach and asked him if I could get back on the team, he told me he'd get back to me after an audience with the school authorities and he did. They verified that there was a significant improvement in my academics and that I could get back in the team if and only if I could keep up with the improvements. I accepted their offer fully. I got back my position on the team and also got better grades. This was a very great achievement to me and I was happy I could make it because at some point, I would have completely given up. How quickly situations could turn around, I thought.