The inner me

The circumstances in my life all told me that I was to forever be trapped in this world of Hillbilly redneck stereotype but I knew better. When I first started school my mother told me I was going to have a hard time, that school would be too hard for me becaues my father was dumb and I was dumb to. She said he couldn't even read his own name and so I would never learn to read as well. That made me determined I had to learn to read! Then my mother would be proud of me if she only knew I was not like my father then and only then could she love me. When I started school I had no idea of how to count past 12 I didn't know a single letter of the alphabet or anything else for that matter. I couldn't tie my shoes or even and this is so embarassing but it's important for you to realize just how little anyone had paid any attetnion to me, you see I didn't even, oh goodness, I couldn't well let's just say I needed help when I used the bathroom. Back then I thought I was just stupid, now I know it's because no one took the time to show me or teach me anything. So when I got to school I was determined to do good and show her, but most importantly myself that I was somebody.
Back in those days kindergarten was really just babysitting but I did almost learn the whole alphabet. I remember though sitting in my desk yes a real desk in first grade thinking I had made it I was such a big boy now! The teacher told us there was some cards on a table over by the window that would help us to learn to read and that in our spare time we could work on them. That was it I just knew those cards would be the key to my learning to read. She said at the end of the year the top 3 people that had worked through the cards would get an award! Well I knew I would be one of the three. I was a man on a mission well at least a boy on a mission. By the end of the year I was on a third grade reading level and came in 2nd in the class. A boy named Mickey was first he beat me by just two cards I was so mad at him, didn't he know I was supposed to be first? Maybe though mom would still be proud and love me after all I was bringing home my ribbon and that proved I wasn't like my father right? But, when I got home nothing was different. In fact I was told something along the lines of if you so smart why are you so stupid. But it didn't matter, for the first time it didn't matter, because now I knew that her and her people as she called her family were wrong. I was somebody, I beat out all of those kids in my room and I was smarter than them. This is when I first started realizing that I was neither my mother or my father but that I was different and that I needed to be and could be and in fact was better than them.