The Book Report

When we were dating, Husband told me he completely read only one fiction book when he was in high school.

To me, an avid reader, that seemed so dubious, but the more I got to know him, the more l realized he was telling the truth.

Now I know that as many as 50% of persons with ADHD have learning disabilities. Keep in mind learning disabilities are not cognitive impairments; they are associated with learners with above-average intelligence, and they have to do with the brain’s ability to store and retrieve information.

Current research refers to his type of learning disability as a reading disability, and it says that for successful reading to take place, the brain systems used for spoken language and decoding the symbols must work properly. Reading disability reflects a problem within those systems.

Husband put it this way: “Reading for me was going three words forward and five words backward. When I got to the end of a sentence, I had to go back again and see what it said. When I got to the end of a paragraph, I’d have to read it again for content. I used a lot of underlines and parentheses.”

I knew he could write well because he often corrected my typing errors and some of my mistakes in grammar mechanics. “So how did you do so well in high school?”  He did have a high “B” average.

“I took classes where I didn’t have to read so much. I listened well because I have auditory strengths.  And ( pause, pause), I faked it a bunch. I never did read a book for the book reports we had to give.”

“How did you get by with it? I would have been caught.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t caught. I think teachers knew the reports were shams. As a matter of fact, Sarah, my 11^th grade English teacher as much as said so.”

“You called her Sarah?”

“Yes, I was the type of kid who could get by with that, too. Ms. Harvey realized my potential and encouraged me.”

“So back to the book reports, how did you do them?”

“I learned to read a bit from the front of the book, some from the middle, and the conclusion. If a teacher asked me additional questions, I would have enough to fake the answers.”

I thought it sounded a bit risky and told him so. Underneath, I admired his strategy.

“It wasn’t successful in my ninth grade class. We were assigned to read a book and give an oral report. I asked this guy named Tim ‘Do you have a book you’ve ever read that you are not using for this report? Is there one you can tell me about?’ He told me about Treasure Island.”

“What went wrong?” I asked.

“The day for the oral reports, Mills, the teacher, said he was going to start in the middle of the alphabet, which meant me. So the first person Mills called on was me.”

Husband went on to explain he gave a poor rendition of the book. The teacher kept asking him questions, and he couldn’t remember what Tim had told him.

In front of the class, the teacher said he didn’t believe Husband had read the book. “I don’t believe you read it.  Since you can’t answer my questions, I am going to give you an F.”

I felt so badly for him when he told me that part of the story.

“Tim sat the first seat in the middle row. He just sat there and laughed at me all the way through the agony.”

I tried positive comments. “Well, at least you got your misery out of the way. And think of what you learned from the situation. You became a faker with strategy.”

He cut his eyes toward me with a unexpected expression on his face. “I wish I had known about Cliff Notes that year.”