Just Me as a Kid

I was such a spoiled bratty kid, you wouldn't'v'e believe it! Thinkin' back, I always would throw temper tantrums for a toy or whatever till I got what I wanted. My grams spoiled me rotten buying me stuff in Chinatown. When my gramps picked me up from daycare, he brought me my (old) fave treat. Both my grandparents and parents spoiled me even if I don't get any good grades.

I was never good at school. I was slow at learning some things. So slow, they thought I had some kind of learning disability. I may have loved reading, but when I had to do reading comprehension, I had to reread the story to find out the answers. It took me awhile to catch up to my classmates. I was always behind. During elementary school in one grade, they had a color-coded system for reading. If you go up one level you get a new color. Well,  I was always stuck at aqua (not that I don't like that color), but other students were going by past me, going to tan, pink, etc.  Well, I showed them, huh?! I overcame all else fail. I am now a self-published author.

But math...that's a whole 'nother story. I am good at math now... and at San Francisco State, I passed statistics with a B average. But all the way from elementary school through high school, I sucked at math. Maybe I was under too much pressure, pressure to succeed. Even my mom who was a math/science teacher can't help me b/c she got frustrated since I couldn't understand the material My smarty-pants older brother tried to help, but he, too, grew frustrated. Dad was no help. He wasn't good at math either. Maybe I've inherited his horrible math skills. In 7th or 8th grade, Sr. Daniel, a traditional nun, who wore a habit and all, she's prob'ly deceased now, but she was so demeaning to me and others who weren't good at math that she prob'ly turned them off from math forever. Even if I didn't do so well on her exams, she didn't need to put me down. But she made me feel bad by saying, 'Awful' on the tests I failed on. Instead of showing me how to do better, she made me stand up in front of the class and do the problems , further humiliating me. She didn't do it to only me, but to others in the same position as me.

Maybe it was her fault that I wasn't able to take any more math courses without feeling like I was going to fail. She was so mean...I thought all nuns were supposed to be kind and understanding. Not this one! No way! No hell! Sr. Margaret Anne was a much nicer and less traditional nun than her.