Chapter 1

[From Chris's editor and wife: This account was dictated by Chris using the voice recognition software on his PC. He wanted to tell his story, and I have made very few changes, except where the software made mistakes.]

Let me say at the start that this never would have gotten written without my wife. She cried a lot while reading it, and I don't understand that. It's just about me and what happened to me, so I don't see any reason to cry about it.

My name is James Christopher Harcourt. Only my Mom and Dad called me James – everybody else called me Chris. They were James and Carolyn. I'll explain why I said 'were' later on. I guess there were too many James in pre-school, which is where people started calling me Chris.

This story has a happy ending, where I'm 23 and have had a kid and a wife. It didn't always seem that my life would have a happy ending, because I had a brain injury when I was born. My cord was wrapped around my neck and I didn't get enough air for too long a time, so I had kind of a stroke when I was born.

They said I have a 'learning disability.' That is a pile of do-do. I just don't learn the same way that everybody else does. (I don't curse or use bad words either, but I don't think that's a disability.) It is very hard for me to read; if it wasn't for language software, I couldn't have put this manuscript together. Even with that, if it wasn't for my wife it wouldn't make sense – like I didn't say 'manuscript, ' I said 'thing'. They thought I was dyslexic for the longest time, but that wasn't it. I could see the letters okay, in the right sequence; they just didn't make any sense. Somebody finally said that it was like a regular person looking at Chinese. No matter how long you looked at it, you didn't understand it.

I can't do math hardly at all. I mean, I can add and subtract and multiply, but fractions don't make any sense to me, and I can't understand division where it doesn't come out even. Like 12 divided by 6 is okay, but 14 divided by 6 is not.

I learn by hearing things, and if you can show me a picture or a diagram of something, I know almost right away what the diagram is about ... so long as the diagram doesn't depend on written words. Even better is if I can see the 'thing' in question; I can usually figure it out, if I can see it.

I also have a physical disability where my left hand, arm and left leg don't exactly work right. I couldn't crawl when I was a baby, and it took me until I was six years old to learn to walk more or less in a straight line. I was in physical therapy until I was seventeen years old. I mean, I could use my left hand and arm, but it was like, jerky, you know? Uncoordinated. But I did learn to run and jump and do all sorts of stuff, but not play basketball or baseball, because you need to use both hands to do that. The TaeKwonDo I learned is, well my Sensei calls it effective but non-standard.

So guess what? I'm right-handed.

I always was the biggest kid in my class, even though I didn't walk in kindergarten. I went around in a wheelchair, and everybody was really surprised when I walked into first grade. They called me Baby Huey, like the big duck in the cartoons, or whatever he was.

I guess they called me that because I was in Special Ed., too. Mrs. Atcheson was my Special Ed. teacher from kindergarten to grade five. She was great. She figured out my reading problem. She managed to get me to read pictures – kind of like the ancient Egyptians used, I guess. And then she would get the pictures lined up with a word. So I could understand that word. Kind of. Like I could understand a picture of a cat. And I'd learn what 'cat' meant. But all three of these words were different to me:

'cat' 'cat' 'cat'

'cause I look at a word and see a pattern, not the letters. So if it looks different (like because the font changed) then it is different. It's a problem.

Also I didn't get the meaning of the little connective words, you can't make a picture of. Like, 'of', 'the', 'and' and so on. So I wasn't really reading. It's like learning a language when you can only hear it, but not ever see it in writing.

They tested my IQ when I was in fifth grade and it came out with 95. Actually, they tested it three times: the first two were 84 and 90. So I used the higher score. But that's just a number people use to put you in a category. I don't believe in categories for people. I didn't do any of the reading questions on the IQ tests, and my math was a joke, so I don't know what they were measuring. I understood when the psychologist was saying the questions out loud, I pretty much could answer him.

I guess I was doing pretty good in elementary school. I'd go to school, go to therapy, and do homework. Then on the weekends, I would try to go out to the playground and have some friends and do stuff with them.

Only problem was, I didn't have any friends, and naturally, I didn't do anything with the friends I didn't have. Because of all my difficulties, I was shy. And the hostile other kids made me even more shy. Then they'd start with the Baby Huey stuff and pretty soon, I didn't want to even try any more.

Except for Lucy. Lucinda, actually. Lucinda Belevere. I called her Lu. She liked to say she was "from the Fox Avenue Beleveres" like that was a big thing. She lived across the street and we all lived on Fox Avenue. But she saw some old movie with somebody named Belevere, and they were "from the Rhode Island Beleveres." She started saying that when she was twelve, and she said it all through high school. I think it was mostly a joke when she got older, but I'm not sure. I sometimes don't get the jokes that other people get. Lucy is three years and six months older than me.

Anyway, Lucy was the only one who would stick up for me. She never called me Baby Huey and would get in the face of anybody who called me that. She was pretty short. Of course, she was short compared to me; I was about the same size as kids who were three and four years older than me. But she was short compared to kids my age, which was three years younger than she was. She was fearless though, and she'd go up to anybody who was calling me Baby Huey or something and tell them to "knock it off." And one time a guy started to push her away, and I got in his face and told him to "knock it off." He did. And Lucy put her arm around mine and we walked together back home.

Did I mention that when Lucy was about twelve, she started to get bigger up top [From the editor: he means her breasts]. And her hips got broader. I was about nine and even I noticed. She started to look like a miniature version of her mother. Except that she wore very short skirts. She was in seventh grade by then and she got to be a JV Cheerleader.

All I knew was that she got interested in boys, got to be a cheerleader, and had practically no more time for me.

That was about when some other girls started to talk to me in school. They were the prettiest girls in school. I didn't understand at all: why were all these girls interested in talking to me? They'd come up to me, touch me on the arm or straighten out the collar on my shirt or something. I'd get all tongue-tied, of course. I didn't know how to talk to anybody, let alone a pretty girl. They'd ask me something, and before I could put together an answer, they'd ask me something else, and then something else. And then they'd say, "Bye." Then they'd skip back to their girl friends – and sometimes there was a boy there too – and she'd say something and then everybody would laugh.

I mean, I could understand that I knew that they were laughing at me. But what could I do? I didn't understand what was so funny, or why they were doing it.

So I stayed home instead of pretending I was going to have fun at the playground. I watched a lot of TV, especially Professional Wrestling. Everybody (like my parents) said that it was fake, but it looked real to me. Especially when they had a big cage match. I saw some guys who were bleeding. You can't fake bleeding, right? And the girls – the wrestling show said they were 'divas' – were wearing these long, tight costumes which showed off their tops and curvy figures. Kind of like Lucy, but only they were taller.

My Mom and Dad were great. She took me around to all my therapy and horseback riding (that was therapy, too) and swim lessons (therapy, too). And reading lessons, too, until they finally figured out that I'd never read like other kids. Dad understood my problems. He understood that I'd get it, but I wouldn't get it from reading about it. He was always bringing in some CD from the library: history, and great books, and science, and just about everything. He even started to go to the college library to get more and more CDs.

So my Mom supported me and loved me, and Dad understood what my problems were and loved me. I think I had a pretty good life.

It took them a long time to figure out that I wanted things to be like I wanted them to be. Like, I'd have three sharpened pencils and one pen in my pencil case when I went to school. I don't know why, I just did. I always put them pencil-pencil-pen-pencil in the pencil case, and then put the pencil case on top of my books so that it wouldn't fall over.

Same with my food. I liked to eat all of one thing then another, then another. Like, all the hamburger, then the broccoli and then the potatoes. I didn't want to start with a drink, but when I got thirsty, but I'd go and get it from the fridge in the middle of the meal. Naturally, I didn't like anything that would need two hands to eat. Like steak. You had to cut that with a knife and fork and I couldn't do that. Eventually, I got a rocker knife that you could use with one hand and cut things up. When I got one, I got to like eating other stuff.

Other things, too, like: Mom and Dad kept telling me that it didn't matter what sequence you did stuff or had stuff. So if it didn't matter, what was wrong with the way I did it?

Anyway, things were okay, I guess. Then I got to sixth grade. It was in a different school. Everything was different, and that made me very uncomfortable. Mrs. Atcheson wasn't my Special Ed. teacher any more. She stayed in the elementary school. Now I was in the middle school. I kept getting promoted to the next grade, because I could pass the tests if somebody would read me the questions out loud. Well, I never passed the math tests, no matter what.

I was about the biggest kid in the school, when I was in sixth grade. The school was for sixth to eighth grades. I was 12, almost 5'10" and very husky. My Dad said I should start lifting weights, because otherwise I wouldn't have any fitness and I'd have all flab. I didn't want to be fat. So I was lifting weights and was pretty strong.

Suddenly, sometime in the next year – or it seemed sudden to me, anyway – a whole bunch of the JV Cheerleaders started to ask me to walk them home or spend time with them. Even some of the high school Cheerleaders from ninth grade started to do that too. The High School was on the same campus as the Middle School. Sometimes the cheerleaders would ask me into their house, and then they'd turn on the TV or gab with some girlfriend on the phone, or both, and I'd just sit there. And after a while they'd say it was time for me to go home, and thanks for walking them home. I could only do it when I didn't have therapy, so that was like three days a week.

I mean, I liked it and all. They were girls, and good looking girls on top of that. What was there to not like? After a bit, I got to taking a CD and a CD player over when I'd walk a girl home. Then I'd listen to the CD. At first the girl would want to see what it was, but I was always listening to 'The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People' or 'How to Use Meditation to Make Your Life Better' and stuff like that. I didn't really like rock and roll music. I did like Bach and Mozart though. I couldn't do math, but I liked the precision of the music and how it was organized.

One time I was listening to 'The Magic Flute' which is an opera by Mozart, and Cindy – she was one of the high schoolers who wanted me to walk her home – just said "Yuck!" and didn't want to listen to it. It was even the 'Queen of the Night' aria – how could anybody not like that? Anyway, Cindy didn't and she went back to watching 'Two and a Half Men' reruns – I think that was the name – and I went back to listening to Mozart on my ear buds. And in about an hour, just when I was about to change CDs, Cindy said it was time to go, and so I went home.

My Mom grilled me pretty good on what was going on during these trips. I knew about sex and kissing and stuff, and I told her that none of that stuff was going on. She told me to be very careful. I got the feeling that she didn't like it at all, but she wasn't going to stop me from doing it.

Then three of the girls – Cindy, Stephanie, and Morrisette – all invited me to the Valentine's Day dance. I was going to meet them at the dance. Mom and Dad thought that was really strange, and Dad even called up the Dad's of the three girls to find out what was going on. He never told me what they said, but I overheard him tell Mom that the girls were just being nice and wanted to include me.

It wasn't exactly like that. I got a suit and a flower for my button hole, and bought a ticket to the dance. When I got there and went inside, all three girls were there with their dates. They all said hello, and we go to sit at the same table, but the girls all danced with some other guys all night, except when I got to take a picture with each of them. I saw Lucy there too; she was dancing with some tall guy who was on the tennis team, I think. It wasn't so nice when the guys – the girls' dates and some other guys – got together while we were taking the pictures and they were all laughing. I suppose they might have been told a joke or something, but I didn't think so.

Chapter 2 »