Special Ed: A Dyslexic's Childhood: Special Ed, #2

By Maxine Yoong

In this second title in the 'Special Ed' trilogy (short for 'Special Education'), Maxine Yoong pulls us back into her rocky past - a painful yet joyful journey growing up as a dyslexic in Malaysia.

Presented in the same immersive and engaging form of short stories, her seemingly disjointed tales which yet proffer rare insights into a dyslexic childhood reflect her experience of dyslexia: A myriad of obvious learning difficulties, with hidden gems of bonus gifts waiting to be discovered.

Truly, as her parting words say, "we could choose to view dyslexia as a gift, not a curse".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Maxine Yoong
• Release date: Jan 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215030691

Book preview

Prologue

Ithink it was my long -time friend, Jane Fang, who commented on the brief epilogue and sparse author's notes in my first book. It never occurred to me that my life, views and opinions would really be of any interest to anyone. However, she convinced me that a published writer's life is definitely of interest to those readers who like to read her books.

Here is a collection of articles detailing my growing-up years in the sixties, right up to the early eighties. At a casual glance, it seemed very typical of a leisurely-paced childhood spent in Old Klang Road and rather hectic teenage whirls in Petaling Jaya. However, not many people chose to write about the highlights of their girlhood. So perhaps Jane is right; I am playing the role of a scribe recording life in Malaysia during those years. It was a happy life, way before air pollution (the haze), water pollution (the many water cuts leading up to 2020), COVID-19, and the high inflation.... It was a period of time when one could save and own his or her own house. After the year 2000, the cost of a landed property escalated way beyond the means of a middle-class salary worker in the Klang Valley.

THIS BOOK IS COMPILED for you, dear Jane. Enjoy glimpses of the past during the delightful days of our youth.

1.  Near-Death Experience

When I was young, my father was a junior clerk in a soft drinks factory. It was a promotion from being a lorry attendant when my mum married him. We were poor. We lived in my maternal grandma's wooden house. There was enough food to go round, but barely.

My mum would take in clothes to wash and iron. Though she could make very little, that furnished my grandma's and her allowance. All the children's New Year clothes came from that side income. I still remember my mum's charcoal iron with sizzling ambers glowing red in the guts of that heavy cage. Mornings, we would find her boiling her customers' white garments. Late afternoons and nights she would be ironing.

Even we kids had to work. There was a neighbour who lived behind us who manufactured coconut sweets. My entire family would be wrapping the little cylindrical sweets in colourful transparent paper before and after lunch. It was interesting to note that although I was the youngest, it was my duty to go collect as well as deliver the sweets. My grandma used to call me the unofficial lawyer of the family. I must have been very outspoken and a pain in other people's necks!

ONE AFTERNOON, THE sweets allotted to us had been duly wrapped and delivered. It was naptime. No one could remember the details. What happened was our neighbour walked into our house, passed the sitting area and walked through the long corridor and saw my legs up in the air struggling above the water holder. I was moments away from drowning in less than six inches of water. Interestingly, there were many people in that house. Apart from my immediate family, we had a family who were our tenants. The man of that family would have been at work like