Clenton Farquarson: I Just Punched Her

Transcript

I had real issues about reading and when I found out later, reading on white paper it moves around, but when the words move around, like kind of shimmer, I thought that was my problem and I blamed myself because I thought everybody else can do that, it must be me. because when I saw people reading from the front and the class teacher would say 'Clenton can you read the next paragraph?' I’d get a massive, like a surge of, you know, being scared, it’s like being on the big dipper, and you’re gonna and you can feel your pit of your stomach. That’s how it felt and I felt so uncomfortable and my behaviour would get, to try and get out of that was to punch someone.
So whoever, I remember... Amanda and I just punched her cos all I was thinking at the time, I wanted to get out of that situation cos them words were more frightful than the head teacher who could cane me or what my mum would do to me or what my step dad would do to me. All I was scared about was getting out of that uncomfortable position of words had real powerful things to me but it wasn’t in a positive way. Cos I hear people when they say that 'Oh when I read a book, I can feel the emotion and the image of.' For me when I try to read a book, the words made me so angry cos I couldn’t decipher them.
And people were reading things and I used to, and the teacher would ask you to follow the.. and I’m thinking, what are they reading, that doesn’t make.. and I just got more and more upset cos I thought they were making it up. And I would make up what I thought it was cos I thought everybody else was making it and then I cot token out of class cos they said I was misbehaving but I didn’t understand all that. It isn’t till later in life that I understand all that and I use my experience to help other children with dyslexia and stuff like that.

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