Why You Should Look Up the Words You Don’t Know
For years, I thought my name was Dumbass.True story. I heard it in the classroom, on the playground, and at home, and I never once questioned it. When you’re a small child, you don’t argue with the world. You believe what it tells you about yourself. And what the world told me, over and over, was that I was slow, that I was broken, that I was the kid who just didn’t get it.Imagine your own father handing you a broom and a dustpan and telling you that the world needs ditch diggers and janitors too. “Here,” he says. “See if you can figure this out.” That was the ceiling someone else built for me before I was old enough to know I could reach higher.This was the 1960s. Back then, they didn’t diagnose learning disabilities; they labeled the children who had them, and the labels stuck like tar. There were no specialists pulling you aside, no gentle explanations, no understanding that a mind could simply work differently. There was only a single, brutal word for a kid like me, and everyone seemed to agree on it: stupid.So I wore it. I answered to it. For years, I honestly believed that was who I was.
The People Who Saw Me
I made it a point to befriend the school janitor. Many afternoons, I would walk the halls beside him as he went about his work, and yes, I helped him. His name was Jack, and Jack was a noble man. He didn’t treat me like gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe. He treated me like a person. When you’ve been told you’re nothing, you never forget the ones who decide otherwise.But here’s the thing the adults never understood: the problem was never that I couldn’t learn. The problem was that when I looked at text, the words came apart. The letters jumbled together and refused to make sense. It wasn’t until my second attempt at second grade that things began to become clear. I excelled at math, yet when it came to reading, I had nothing. Nada.Still, that math ability told me something important. I could remember almost everything I heard, and I could work through numbers with ease. So I came to a conclusion of my own, one that no teacher ever handed me: I was not stupid. I was an audible learner. My mind worked. It just worked differently.
The Hallway
That realization didn’t make things easy. I struggled, and the frustration ran deeper than words can capture. My third-grade teacher, worn thin by that frustration, would send me out into the hallway during reading so I wouldn’t distract the rest of the class. She was not kind to me, and I felt every bit of it. A child sitting alone on cold tile while everyone else learns to read: that image has never left me.Then came a small accident that changed my life. I got my hands on an old college textbook, and I noticed that some of the lines were highlighted. When I traced a highlighted line with my finger, something remarkable happened. Voilà, the sentence made sense. Giving my eyes a single direction to follow was all I had ever needed.From there, I caught up with my classmates. I graduated early, without a single special education teacher guiding me. And what happened after graduation is a whole different story. I went to the half-price bookstore, bought textbooks in every subject I had done poorly in, and taught myself every last page.The boy they called Dumbass taught himself.
Why This Matters to You
Words matter. They have the power to shape our perceptions, influence our emotions, and drive our actions. They are the very building blocks of thought, and the right word, expertly placed, is worth a paragraph of explanation.
I know this in my bones, because for years I lived without them, locked out of the one thing that could set me free.So when you skip over a word you don’t know, you aren’t saving time. You are leaving a small door closed. You are choosing not to grow.
Right now, I’m writing a dystopian science fiction novel centered on AI, and I use a great many technical terms in it.
Terms I understand. From fiction to neurology, from medical pathology to engineering, I spent years working as an engineer in the Medical Center. I remember everything I was exposed to there, including autopsies, surgeries, and much more. From music to flying, the vocabulary is real, and it is mine. Every word earned.
So when you’re reading this book on Kindle and you reach a word you don’t know, look it up. If you buy the print version (title to be announced, so follow for updates), you’ll find a glossary waiting in the back. Please use it.
We all have gifts, and we all have deficits. Not everyone shares the same intellect, and that is simply a fact, though it can feel like a hard one. But dehumanizing people because of it is wrong. We are all worthy of dignity, and we would all do well to remember that.
The kid in the hallway grew up. And he still believes in the power of a single, well-understood word. Currently I have close to thirty published novels and have written over 100,000,000 words. Did my third grade teacher telling me that the lights were on and nobody was home, help or hurt? You decide.
Before You Go
If any part of this story spoke to you, don’t let it be the end. Let it be the beginning.
Follow for updates on the book, including the title reveal and release date. Share this post with someone who needs to hear that a different mind is not a broken one. Comment below and tell me: what is a word you looked up recently, or a person like my Jack who refused to give up on you? I read every one.Best.
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