Member-only story
Read out loud
A Fiction
“You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
The couple basking in the sun by the playa turned around when the above pierced their eardrums louder than a lifeguard’s whistle. Sitting two feet behind the couple, Ana read aloud a book — “Gone with the Wind.”
Ana’s father discovered her hypersensitivity caused her short attention span and got her into reading everything out loud. Reading aloud helped her tremendously, as that blocked out the external aural stimuli, which distracted her easily.
Often Ana was ridiculed at school for reading everything out loud as she attended a regular school since Ana’s ADHD was not diagnosed, and no school in the town they lived in had a Special needs program. So, with limited choices, her parents settled for what was available.
Some days, Ana read and spat out information from books like a genius; on other days, she struggled to focus. Her sporadic sharpness and alertness bothered her father, but it did not occur to him that she belonged in a special education program.
When Ana was ten, her sharpness surpassed her 38-year-old Dad’s, and he struggled to answer her rapid-fire questions. Everyone thought she liked to trouble her Dad, who treated the situation like a…
