National Adult Literacy Database

June 7, 1999

Kimberly Hansen has lived in Victoria, BC, since she was 14 years old. She is now 20 and she lives on her own with her cat, Sugar. She has been going to READ Victoria Society for five months and has really enjoyed it.

 

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Growing up with a Disability

by Kimberly Hansen

I was diagnosed with my disability when I was three. At the time I was too little to know what it meant. But as I got older I learned more. When I was in elementary school I hated it. Kids were scared of me. They used to think that they would catch it.

I felt like God had stuck me with a curse. When I was in elementary school, one boy I went to class with pushed me so hard into a wall, he knocked me unconscious and gave me a fat lip.

After I went to elementary school I went to Jr. high school. It was OK. Kids were still scared of me, except for two people, my best friends, who I had for the whole year. I called them my angels. They always knew how to make me feel better after one of my teachers had given me a hard time or the so called normal kids had given me a hard time. They would be right there for me no matter what.

I finished my grade ten, I went to high school, but then I hit a spot in my life where I was sick of kids picking on me and giving me a hard time because I was different.

I was pulled out of school to go live with my dad. I lived with him in Penticton for six months where I learned that it wasn't me with the problem, it was all the assholes I went to school with that were the problem.

My learning disability is the best thing that I could ever have because it makes me special and different. I realized a lot of the kids I went to school with, I was a lot smarter than them at a lot of things. I see some of them now. They do not remember me but I never forget the face of someone that picked on me. I'm proud to be different and not like everyone else.