It was early spring, my first semester at CSULB and I had been questioning how do I explain my disability to people who ask.

I was to meet with Brian the therapist and the coordinator for the SBP within DSS. The Stephen Benson Program is geared toward students with a learning and/or print processing disability. Students that are accepted into the program can receive academic counseling, testing for a learning disability, extended time on classroom exams, and introduction to assistive technology.

He was going to help me understand my individual ability/achievement profile scores.

I had two back to back appointments that day and when I first arrived I went straight to Lethia’s office, the writing specialist. She was to introduce and demonstrate technology to assist me in my education…

Sounded cool and I was excited to learn.

I wasn’t in her office but a minute when Brian popped in smiling and asking if she had stolen his client’s appointment time. I immediately felt anxious, which was not unusual, thinking to myself… not again.

I checked my calendar and sure as the sun shines, somewhere in the process of writing the date and time, along with my brain’s intake and storing the info process, I had reversed the appointments... I did remember to show up !

I followed him and tried to hide my discomfort behind a smile and a laugh, just another blonde moment I found myself saying aloud.

In his office I quickly scanned the room as I do every environment I am in, particularly with anything and anyone novel. He had picture frames with no pictures but cut out comic strips that were taped to the glass. He had one Philodendron plant, you know the type that is hard to kill and grows long vines. His office was a fairly neat and organized work space with photos of his children, the walls were plain…good…not to many distractions.

Brian has one of those smiles that is contagious, he is white with ice blue eyes,

a pleasant round face with dimpled cheeks.

He laughs easily and I liked him immediately but he had yet to be a person I felt safe with; nothing personal other then It was our first meeting.

I sat at a table across from him.

He had taken all my testing information and put it into a program he had developed, it was a three color bar graph, horizontal lines of pink yellow and green along with four small pictures representing the four area that I had extensive testing in, reading, math, writing and ability…picture a brain.

The first was a pink column, it represented below average.

The yellow wider of the three and middle column was the average and next

was the green column representing the above average.

The range of the graph measured from 0% to100%

I stared down at the paper, my eyes heavy with emotion, I held back tears… Snapshots of moments in time throughout my life flooded my thoughts as he spoke… using words like dyscalculia, dyslexia, ADHD. It all made perfect sense in reviewing the many struggles I have had.

Then a word I never expected to hear…gifted.

I could see the vertical blue bars of my math scores all in the pink…below average.

Reading vocabulary, comprehension and spelling also in pink.

There was my yellow high and low averages.

Then there was two bars in the green, one was writing fluency, the other…

perceptual reasoning… my superpower.

Simply stated, I have ADHD and a learning disability that affects math along with processing decrease deficits in working memory and processing speed that impact my reading comprehension.

At that moment of discovery, I was awakened to the start of an new adventure

concerning what to do with this information and how to understand and use

my two superpowers wisely. When the roots of a problem are identified and understood the more likely a remedy can be found.

Lethia’s office was next and an even bigger surprise awaited.