Jumbled

There has to be an electrical short in the grey matter located between my ears, under my hair, inside the shell that has mended cracks but still some how keeps that grey matter contained. My brain is full size, it doesn't rattle around in my skull, but something is amiss.

Maybe it's because my mother smoked when she was pregnant with me. Perhaps somehow the smoke from those addictive cylindrical papers stuffed with tobacco seeped into the womb from her lungs. Maybe the smoke found a passage through all the air pockets and past all that mess and globby stuff inside her belly to my tiny brain. I will never really know. Health experts and science masters can espouse all the evils of smoking, but I will never actually have undeniable proof. Supposition at best.

Mother was only twenty when I was born. Thirteen months after my sister, she had a second child. The calico kid I was dubbed. My hair was a multitude of colors, kind of like a patch work quilt. Bits of color everywhere. Maybe her age and the closeness of the births was the cause. Another supposition.

My father was afflicted with the same thing. Another supposition, heredity. He was embarrassed by it, became a wall flower unless he was drinking. After a couple of beers or one potent Manhattan, the unspoken words would fly out of his mouth. Most times causing my mother to cringe, or shrink away to pretend he was not her husband.

My first memory of it was having to tell my sister's fourth grade teacher that my sister was sick with a stomach ache and would not be in school. Why my mother did not write a note I will never be privileged too. It was cruel. I didn't want to sound like a baby, and tried to come up with something else. I couldn't so I told the teacher my sister had a tummy ache. What can a second grader do?

The next memory is my worst. Ms., not Mrs. not Miss, MS. Miller my third and fourth grade teacher. I didn't like her and she made it clear she was not fond of me. The agony and fear, I still feel in the pit of my being, the belly butterflies can occur at the mention of her name. Every opportunity was taken by her, reading out loud, writing at the chalk board, spelling bees, it was all a game to her. The meanie.

She threatened to leave me behind in the classroom, by myself, if I did not get it correctly. The chairs were pushed in under the desks, all the children lined up with their lunch boxes and bags in hand, the classroom lights were turned off. The door was opened, and finally I blurted out ALUNIMUM. No that wasn't right, ALNAMIN, no, not correct either, ALMUMNIM. Nope not correct yet. Any other trys??? I couldn't help it. Try as I might, I could not pronounce the word Aluminum.

I get tongue tied. Multi-syllable words are difficult for me. To this day I can not pronounce archipelago, I have to take my time with aluminum, and say each syllable slowly. Stomach ache, is two words, but I could not say it when I was 7. Ms. Miller knew I had difficulty and would force me to read out loud, write the words at the chalk board and then try to pronounce them, she humiliated me during spelling bees and purposely gave me the most multi syllable words in the fourth grade repertoire.

Words scare me. They are in my head, I can say them silently, but when it comes time to speak. Forget it. The brain dictionary just is not up to Webster's standards. Maybe the New York Times would be interested in my brain, for the Jumble.