Have you ever wondered, what you would do if you couldn’t interpret the simple letters of the alphabet? Well, John Almy, the author of, “Alphabet Soup: My Life as a Reader”, withstood that exact problem. Imagine at a young age looking at b, d, p, and q. Now imagine not seeing a distinction between the four letters. That’s frustrating isn’t it? As Mr. Almy states, “One of the first things I learned in school was that I was stupid. Really Stupid.” (1). John was faced with an issue that did not make school pleasant for a young assertive boy and his family, which really was not in a good state of mind already. So, put yourself into John’s shoes. Try to understand the difficult times of his adolescence.
School was not always unpleasant to John. He said, “When I first started going to school it was fun.” (1). Of course he was talking about the recess part of school. “Playing outside on the jungle gym, wrestling outside in the mud, and if you liked girls then you chased them around and pull their hair.” (1). That was always the best part of school, until that screeching bell rang and turned everyone into little learning robots, which meant back to work again.
John never considered being the class genius, but the time came where the teacher began to teach the alphabet. She wrote the letters up on the board, and she asked the class to define what the letter is. Well, the letter A was easy, so was B, and C. He was delighted to get those right, but when that letter D came around he was astonished. John said, “I made it all the way through the letters a, b, and c, and then my glory days as a reader came to a halt with the letter d.” (1). He yelled out, “BEEEEE!” excitedly thinking he was correct, but of course he was wrong. He didn’t understand. In John’s head, he thought they were the same letter. He states that, “a b was a b was a b”, and that “he didn’t care what direction