A Number Two Pencil Is Not Required

here is a link to the audio version, in case you :would rather listen to this blog: https://youtu.be/bQ_FUZvrXgI

Now that another summer has flown by, and a new school year is upon us, I started to think about what was the worst part of my academic performance. I would have to say that the hardest, and most challenging part, revolved around taking tests. Any kind of test, no matter what the subject was. It didn't matter because I would experience a brain freeze that was equivalent to sucking down a thirty-two ounce slushie in  about fifteen seconds, (I don't know if that is actually possible, but if it were I would imagine that a person would have a major head-rush). The panic would first take a firm grip on my young mind when I heard from the adult authority in my classroom that the test would require the use of a number two pencil. This statement was said with such surety, and in a commanding voice, that I was utterly convinced that if I had anything but the required number two, say even a pencil that was a two-point-one, that I would fail in every aspect of life from this point on. Next came the challenge of putting my name on the paper before the test could begin, which felt to me to be some kind of pretest, like the people who had put this standardized test together were trying to first determine if I was intelligent enough to even take their test. I doubt very much that it would even have helped at this point if the multiple choice portion of the test had begun here because I still, more than likely, would have even gotten my name wrong. I would have panicked, attempted to swat away the black spots that were dancing before my eyes, and picked choice number E, which stated that A, B, C, and D were all correct. I would have been playing the odds, because what I had discovered was that usually when there was a choice that would combine several answers, that this choice would invariably seem to end up being the correct one. Unless of course it was a trick question, designed to make you think. These kind of questions were the worst, because then I would always find myself trying to work out if this particular teacher was crafty enough to do that sort of thing. Everything would be factored into the equation, from what kind of car they drove, who they hung out with while monitoring the lunch room, who they spoke with in the hall, and what they snacked on at their desk while we were supposed to be reading. I was a profiler long before the word was tossed around on every major cop show on television. Really ,though, the only legitimate chance that I would have had at this point to get my name correct would have been if this part of the pretest would have have been true or false. Well...at least I would have had a fifty-fifty shot.

And that is exactly what my Ataxia feels like much of the time. A true or false, black or white, fifty-fifty shot at getting it right. Like my Cerebellum is saying that it doesn't matter that I stayed up half the night reading The Finer Points Of Walking, or, Clear Speech For Dummies. That it will decide how things will work, and that the best I can do is guess, and hope that I am right. Or at the very least, that my body is grading on a curve. It feels that way much of the time, but it doesn't actually have TO BE that way. Life with a handicap does not have to feel like a physical true or false test, like there is only one way for you to accomplish a task. It does not have to become a multiple choice test. It doesn't have to become any kind of test, unless you want it to be. In my life with Ataxia Along For The Ride, I have discovered that it has become about continually striving to learn new and better ways to deal, struggle, and coupe within daily activities. I have learned that my life has become one in which I continually have to adapt. The questions, I find, are always the same; how will I get dressed, how will I eat, how will I get from this point to that point,ect, ect. But I find that the answers continually change and are never wrong, just every one of them becomes a different way to solve the same problem.

And the best part of this whole thing? A number two pencil is not required.