Ron and Chris

Long ago in a beautiful place called Chesapeake Beach, a boy was born.  He was born by the beach and learned to swim almost as soon as he learned to walk.

He grew up quickly.  Soon he was sailing a small sailboat.  From about the age of 10, he was allowed to sail his sailboat alone as long as he stayed within sight of the shore.

He didn’t like school because it was very hard for him to read.  He couldn’t read well until he was a teenager and even then it was a very slow process for him.  His teachers didn’t know how to help him.  Some of them even thought that he was not very smart, because he couldn’t read well, Ron started to believe the teachers who thought he was not very smart.

Ron stayed away from school as often as he could.  Ron’s father was an engineer helping to design one of the first small gasoline engines. He was often very busy with his work. Ron’s mother was very pretty and popular.  Her friends often invited her to visit and kept her very busy. Ron could often sneak away to swim and sail.

Ron’s best friend was a huge orange tomcat named Pebbles.  Pebbles loved swimming even more than Ron did.  Ron would take his fishing tackle on the sailboat to catch fish to feed to Pebbles.  If Ron could not catch enough fish to keep Pebbles happy, Pebbles would jump over the side of the sailboat and swim home.

It was not easy, but slowly Ron made it through school.  He had to take many breaks to swim and sail with Pebbles, but he finally graduated from High School. By this time, Pebbles was old. When Ron when to sail, Pebbles would sun himself on the beach until Ron returned tired and happy from a day sailing. Then they would both stroll home for dinner.

Pebbles understood Ron without words, but Ron often had trouble explaining to others how he felt.  When he would try to explain how hard it was to read to his parents and teachers, they would just smile and tell him to try a bit harder, or they got angry and told him not to be so lazy.

Soon Ron stopped trying to explain things directly.  Instead, he began to sculpt in clay, whittle wood, build boxes and furniture, paint, play a fiddle and tell fantastic stories.  Ron was very creative, but he stopped trying to explain his feelings to others with words.

Ron grew up and married Kay.  They had four girls and a boy, Mary, Julie, Beka, Ann and Chris.  Chris also found reading very, very difficult, but his father Ron did not share much about his childhood, so Chris did not really know that reading had been just as hard for his father.

Ron did teach all of his children to sculpt, paint, play music and tell great stories.  Every summer the family would sail together and go on long camping trips.  In the evenings under the stars and often around a fire, they would share their stories.  Sometimes Ron would sing his stories, about troubles overcome, wise sailors and frogs going courting.

Chris was nine years old and the teachers decided that he could not read well enough.  Chris was told that he had something called dyslexia.  He joined a class for pupils with learning disabilities. Some of the other pupils made fun of him.  Chris’ mother Kay noticed that Chris could name all of the different birds that came to the bird feeder in front of the dining room window.  She met with Chris’ teachers to explain how good his memory was and how quickly he learned new things.  They decided to move him from a class for pupils with learning disabilities into a class for gifted and talented pupils.

Watching Chris’ experiences in school Ron learned about himself.  Through his son’s experiences, Ron also found his way back to the words that helped him explain how he had felt as a boy.