Page 35 of Happy Trails & Honey Pots

Even though I knew AJ would hate me for it, I listened to them while I was folding my clothes. I could put my earphones in to give them privacy, but the truth was, I wanted to hear how it was going. I was worried for AJ. He got frustrated easily when it came to reading. Or math. Or pretty much anything that wasn’t sports or video games.

“Do you want to talk about the scene or run through it a few times?” Miles asked.

“We can run through it,” AJ said. “I’ve been practicing with Kendall at school.”

“Okay, good. Whenever you want to start.”

“I saw the book…I mean…is that…I mean…” AJ stumbled over his words.

I could hear AJ’s tone change. He was getting frustrated. My heart sank. Part of the reason I didn’t want him to do this was because I knew that there might be long chunks of dialogue. He was barely getting by with his schoolwork as it was, and that was with a tutor and extra time doing his tests. I didn’t want anything to knock him down again. He’d already felt like he was different, and he’d even told me several times he thought he was stupid.

“No big deal. Let’s try again,” Miles encouraged.

“When the book I saw…wait…I meant…” AJ sighed heavily. “I can do it. I don’t know why the words in my head aren’t coming out right.”

I laid the shirt I’d been folding down. If this continued, I would have to shut it down. I was not going to let this set him back even further.

“Okay, so let’s forget about running the scene for a minute,” Miles said.

“No, I can do it,” AJ argued. “I just, I know what it says, I just get…”

“I know, man; believe me, I know you can. Listen, I used to get so frustrated with myself because I thought my brain was messing me up, but then I realized that it wasn’t. It was actually helping me.”

“It washelpingyou?” AJ repeated.

“Yeah, it was. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was. When I got diagnosed with dyslexia, I was twelve, and I had only done commercials and a few sitcoms before that where my dialog was short lines, so it wasn’t so bad. But then I got cast in a role in a small independent film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, and not only did I have to learn a ton of lines, but they were in what felt like a completely different language. I mean, technically it was English, but Shakespeare was not the way I was used to hearing people talk. My manager had me go and see an acting coach, Jay Rudin, who specialized in working with neurodivergent performers, and he changed my life.”

“He did?”

I could hear the hope and vulnerability in AJ’s voice, and it broke my heart wide open. I hated seeing AJ struggle. Even though I knew I couldn’t fight all his battles for him, I wished I could. I wanted to. It killed me that I couldn’t.

“Yep,” Miles continued. “Jay didn’t sugarcoat anything with me. He told me the truth. He said that with dyslexia, I was verylikely to have short-term memory loss, difficulty reading out loud, that it might be hard for me to learn another language, that I might get overwhelmed or frustrated easily, that my words could get scrambled from when they left my head to when they came out of my mouth, and that all those things could cause me anxiety and maybe give me low self-esteem. And they might even make me get misdiagnosed with ADHD.”

I took in a shaky breath. Most of those things were issues that AJ had experienced. He’d never attempted to learn any other language, but if I had to guess, I would assume that he would struggle. And he’d been tested for ADHD twice.

“And that changed your life?” AJ stated flatly, not sounding too impressed.

Miles chuckled. “Well, no, that made me feel like Jay understood me and really saw me for who I was. I was so sick of people telling me that I was smart and just not paying attention or living up to my potential.”

I exhaled a breath that had been building up in me for years. Several teachers had said the same thing about AJ. It was so frustrating to him and me.

“What changed my life was that Jay told me then thing that caused my brain to have those challenges made my brain have strengths in other ways.”

“What strengths?”

I could hear the hope in AJ’s voice. His interest was clearly piqued.

“People with dyslexia also havereallyvivid imaginations, and they are visual thinkers.”

Check and check. AJ wasalwaysdaydreaming. His teachers constantly said he lived in a world in his head.

“They are resilient,” Miles continued.

Check. No matter what knocked AJ down, he got up and kept going.

“They can identify patterns and similarities in groups of things. They can solve complicated problems quickly. They are out-of-the-box thinkers and will always come up with an abstract solution. And they are extremely intuitive and can make very strong connections with people.”

As Miles spoke, I realized not only was he describing AJ, he was also describing Austin. And I wondered if he was also dyslexic, and he just hadn’t been diagnosed.

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