A Short, Angry Essay About Living With a Learning Disability

I couldn’t tie my shoes until I was in the 5th grade.

Pay attention to that second word. “Couldn’t.” I could not do it; I tried and tried for years and it wouldn’t work. And it wasn’t for a lack of effort: there were specialized physical therapists who did their best to help me, there were countless scattershot days of the week when I was pulled out of class for gentle-yet-intensive drills on how to pull off a simple Bunny Ears loop on my little sneakers.

I learned from this experience with my kind-hearted counselor that there’s something much more demoralizing about the dismayed sigh of a helpful soul than the taunt of a brutish asshole. Kids aren’t good judges of anything, much less intangibles like character or ability, but when an adult who’s only job is to help thinks you’re notably deficient, that’s when you know you’re a fuckup of some great magnitude. This knowledge never goes away.

I learned how to tie my shoes eventually, but I never got much further than the Bunny Ears — the dreaded Double Knot remains an illusive target — and there are many other things I still can’t do very well to this day. I can’t hold a pen for too long without my hand cramping up, I can’t tie a heavy bag of garbage in such a way that its contents will stay contained, and I recently lost a job because I…