You will find short stories on this site. Most are autobiographical. Some are fiction.

BRAIN DAMAGE

In the Spring of my last year at Roosevelt Junior High I signed up to take algebra along with several of my friends, however I was not allowed to take it. Instead, I was assigned to an art class. In a subsequent conversation with my father, he asked about school. I told him that I had not been allowed to take algebra.

A few weeks after my conversation with Dad, I was called out of class to talk with a woman. She asked me many questions. She also asked me to perform some challenging tasks. One was repeating a long series of numbers back to her. She seemed surprised at how well I did with her challenging questions.

The next time I spoke with Dad, he asked if I had been interviewed by a psychologist. I told him about the woman with lots of questions. He told me he had called the principal. From him, he learned that my school records included a note. This note, which was read by all my teachers from second through eighth grade, stated that they were not to expect much from Tod Lundy because he had suffered brain damage as a small child. This story probably resulted from my first-grade teacher learning that, as a two-year-old, I had been strangled with a swing rope. Dad told me that he had insisted that the school perform tests on my intelligence rather than relying on a note from a first-grade teacher.

While Dad’s phone call resulted in a correction of my records, it came too late for me to enroll in algebra. My first year of high school changed the course of my education. The most important difference was that the note was no longer in my school records, consequently, teachers’ expectations of me were the same as they were of other students. Another important occurrence; was that my English teacher gave me a small spiral-bound composition book in which she asked me to write daily. I was the only student with this assignment. She would sit with me, after class, and review my notes. She focused on spelling, grammar, and the clarity of my writing. At first, I felt it was an unfair burden, but grew to think of it as an enjoyable special assignment. Another source of academic encouragement occurred in my junior year at Eugene High. It was then that I excelled in the geometry class. It was the first time I had experienced how it felt to be among the best students in a class.

During my senior year, a group of grade school teachers came to visit the high school. My first-grade teacher was among them. She came to my debate class. She seemed astonished to see that I had made it all the way to my senior year of high school and that I was even in the debate class. She had certainly been instrumental in my being held back in the first grade and was probably the source of the brain damage note in my school records.

I did well in high school and was accepted at both the University of Oregon and Oregon State College. I have earned three university degrees and I am a licensed architect. I have been an assistant professor of architecture at three universities. These accomplishments are an indication that my brain injury was not too debilitating. On the other hand, my school records were. If that note, about my having a damaged brain, had not been discovered and expunged, it is likely that I would have been allowed to complete high school with little academic education and no prospect of going to college.