HELP ME OUT PLS!!!!!
The author includes the information in paragraph 3 to -
A) Explain how his brain functions so that readers can understand why school was difficult,
B) Make an excuse as to why he dropped out of school.
C) Shame his teachers for not understanding how his brain worked.
D) Prove how good at Scrabble and other word games he is.
Paragraph:
"When we say someone is smart, what does that mean? Does it mean they performed well in school? If it does, then I’m the opposite of smart. I was awful in school. It wasn’t because I didn’t know how to read or write, or that I didn’t understand the concept of math. I just couldn’t learn the way my teachers wanted me to. I was different, and none of my schools had time for different.
What made me different? Was I a product of my environment? Maybe. I lived in poverty and bounced around from school to school after each eviction sent my family on the search for another apartment and my single mother in pursuit of another job. Learning in those circumstances would be difficult for any kid. But did that make me not smart? Sure, I wasn’t an honor roll student, but none of the other kids knew about section 8, HUD housing, food stamps, hotel vouchers, and how to pack everything you own into two black trash bags in under thirty minutes while the sheriff tossed your furniture out. I knew these things. This qualifies as smart, doesn’t it?
But that was life outside of my brain. What was going on inside was the other reason people thought there was something wrong with me. The doctors explained it like this: If everyone has a sack of water around their brain, and lightning strikes, the water absorbs the blow and allows the brain to only receive a small charge of electricity, letting you learn safely and normally. My brain was made without the sack surrounding it. I take the lightning—information coming in—head on. I learn from each strike, but not the way others learn new things or process information. This meant that I dissected what I heard or read, seeing how many other words I could make from various words. I’d then play with the letters, trading vowels with words in the next sentence to make new words.
This made reading very difficult and reading aloud nearly impossible. The teachers didn’t know what to do with me. I’d hand in assignments that had nothing to do with the lesson, but every letter from each question was used to create a story. I’d hand in my story and hope the teacher enjoyed it, but I was always failed. I was always placed in the back of the classroom, the place for students the teachers had given up on. I was allowed to hand in my silly stories and I managed to pass with Ds.
But I loved words. I collected them to make stories. Always stories. I had to tell stories.
It got worse in high school (or better, depending on how you look at it). I was failing all of my classes. I was reprimanded constantly for not paying attention, for not focusing, and for fooling around. But I was paying attention, just not the way they expected. I was different.
Being reminded I was different wasn’t new to me. We were the poor family. I was the kid who didn’t have a dad. I was the kid who wore the same pants every day. And we were always the only Native American family anyone knew. And in school, we were taught that Native Americans were the bad guys. The savages. The ungrateful killers who refused the bible and scalped all the innocent white people who just wanted to flee their oppressive homelands and make a better life for their families.
This was my identity I was given. I was a poor Native American boy with no dad and oh, yeah, there was also something wrong with my brain. That’s who I was to people on the outside, but that’s not who I ever was. Not really. I was different, yes, but I didn’t yet know that didn’t mean I was un-teachable.
Throughout high school, the lightning strikes and my grades got worse. I was sent to doctors and put on pills. These pills were intended to calm the storm inside my brain. At this time, I was frequently having seizures. I’d wake up in a hospital completely humiliated, knowing everyone at school would be talking about how I snapped during class, started spitting, and was flopping on the floor like a fish out of water. It was so embarrassing. I even quit playing basketball, where I was my school’s MVP, because of the fear of having another seizure on the court, in front of everyone.
I found myself depressed for the first time in my life. I didn’t want to live anymore if it meant worrying that my next trip to the hospital could happen at any moment. I stopped sports, I stopped hanging out with my friends, and I didn’t have anyone to talk to about this weird condition. All I had left is words. So I kept writing my stories."