Haley O'Brien UWRT 1103
Everybody's A Genius
(most people don't know it)
One of the smartest people I know has a lot of trouble with reading and writing. He’s 14 years old, and his learning disabilities have challenged him in the classroom for his entire life. He has speech impediments that can make him difficult to understand if you’ve never spoken to him before, and his Asperger’s syndrome makes him think and behave in a different way than most people his age. He also has the biggest heart I’ve ever encountered and a brain to match, and I am so unbelievably fortunate to have him in my life.
I’ve been babysitting and tutoring Henry since he was 9 years old. The first time I met him, he was so small and shy. We’ve done his homework together after school every day for five years, and the growth I’ve seen in him is astonishing, academically and otherwise. Being successful in school has posed many challenges for him, not because he’s not smart enough but because he doesn’t come to understand and communicate things in the same way that most kids his age do. In spite of that, he’s taken all of his challenges in stride and found a way to overcome them all.
Being his tutor hasn’t always been easy for either of us. There have been so many times when he was writing an essay and he spelled a word wrong four times in a row, so he got frustrated and threw down his pencil. After that and a few words of encouragement, though, he always picks it up and tries again, and eventually he gets it right. Sometimes when he gets really angry at himself, I can’t find the words or the patience to calm him down, and we both have to take a minute for ourselves. Sometimes we just don’t understand each other; his questions can be lost on me, and my explanations on him. We can run out of ways to say things and have to just move on.
My favorite time to watch Henry is over the summer, because we grow so much closer. We don’t have the barrier that his schoolwork can pose, and our words flow much more freely as we sit by the pool or take long walks with Stella, his dog. I can’t even begin to explain how many different things we’ve discussed as we’ve explored the friendly neighborhood of Loudonville, our small hometown in upstate New York. We’ve unraveled so many of our thoughts to each other that we’ve come to understand how the other thinks. He knows exactly how to push my buttons or make me laugh hysterically, and he can look in my eyes and know I need a hug before I know it myself. I can get him to tell me all the details of his daily school drama, something that is usually kept top-secret from everyone else, and make him laugh so hard he cries, too. He’s gone from the quiet kid up the street to the little brother I always wanted, and I never would’ve thought I would learn so much from him.
Over the years, however, we’ve had that problem less and less. As we’ve worked through our issues and found a way to communicate, we’ve begun to make sense to each other.
While I was teaching Henry reading, writing, and arithmetic, he taught me the indescribable importance of individuality. He is so wonderful, yet has been made to feel inferior by so many people, both his peers and adults, just because he thinks and speaks differently than them, and it’s just not fair. It’s devastating to see how many people don’t have the patience to get through all his walls and get to know him, because they miss out on one of the most inspiring and pure souls I’ve ever met.
I feel bad for the people that don’t know Henry like I do. A lot of them don’t ask him his opinion or take him seriously just because he can’t always get his thoughts out perfectly on the first try. It’s really a shame, because no one sees the world quite like he does. They don’t know how much they’re missing.
All of his challenges can hold him back and make it hard for him to succeed and fit in, but they also make him who he is, and that is worth so much more than a perfectly written sentence. There’s this quote that says,
"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid."
It’s crazy to me that someone who can have so much trouble communicating in certain scenarios is also one of the people to whom I connect the most. Spending his entire life trying to understand himself and those around him has made him incredibly empathetic and relatable. Beyond that, his experiences have aged him well beyond his years, and the insight he provides never fails to amaze me. I hope to be half as understanding, optimistic, mature and level-headed as he is someday.
Henry is undoubtedly a genius, and he has spent way too much time believing that he’s stupid.
Henry and I used to have to try to connect with each other. Now, it’s just effortless. I used to try to teach him to think like I do, but instead I learned how to put myself into his shoes, and get him to meet me halfway. We’ve taught each other how to understand the other, and by doing that, I’ve also come to understand myself. I’ve had to analyze the way I think in order to compare it to the way he does, something from which I think I will grow exponentially. He’s shown me how to step outside of myself and into someone else’s world wholeheartedly, and doing so completely changed my own world.
Henry has shown me that literacy is not being able to explain things perfectly in words, but being able to understand and express thoughts. He’s shown me that understanding does not come in black and white on a page, but in colors and shapes and ideas. Our words are merely vehicles of expression for the pictures inside our heads, and his picture is just as beautiful and clear as anybody else’s. He and I have made our own form of literacy, lying on a trampoline and finding shapes in the clouds, revealing our colors and painting each other’s worlds.
I used to worry about Henry, who he’d be when he grew up, what he would do with his life, but I don’t anymore. He knows how to make his own place in this world, and he has so many amazing things to contribute. He is sincerely irreplaceable. It’s the people who don’t see that in him that I worry about.
To me, those people who see the world in black and white, the ones who don’t realize that we’re all supposed to think differently, they are the ones who are illiterate. They don’t understand the beautiful complexity of people.
Henry gets it. He and I understand each other just fine.