Attention Deficit Disorder: An Analysis

When running into someone for the first time, people often inquire “who are you?” On the surface this question appears simple enough; you give your name, maybe a fact about why you are there, and the question seems to be satisfied. However, if you turn that question inward and ask “who am I?” you discover that what appeared to be a shallow puddle of a question is actually a great well of complexity. When asking the questions “who am I?” and “who am I as a reader?” I find that the answer to both of these questions to indeed be long, complex narratives, but conveniently these narratives appear to be one in the same. To find the beginning we must go back to a young boy of age 5 who had begun kindergarten, but never seemed to give school much thought at all, the only things that he cared about were Power Rangers, playing with his twin brother Ross, and when his mother would read to him and Ross at night. The young boy adored the last of these most of all, as his mother would often read from the wonderful treasure that he had found under the Christmas tree earlier that year: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. It will be these precious moments spent wide-eyed and mouth agape, learning about the wonders of wizards and muggles that will spark the passion that will grow to define his childhood. Surprisingly enough, this boy was nowhere near the first person in his class to pick up reading, in fact he seemed to struggle with it more than any of his peers. …show more content…
This changed however, following a diagnosis with Attention Deficit Disorder towards the end of kindergarten; by the end of the year he had picked up reading with ease, and by the time 1st grade rolled around he was placed in the advanced reading group consisting of the 6 best readers in the class. The spark in the young boy’s heart had taken hold and continued to grow, demanding more and more fuel in the form of bigger, harder, more interesting books. The books enchanted him, they possessed the power to create rich new worlds with each turn of the page, and it wasn’t like TV where he merely spectated these worlds, no, with the books they burst to life around him, engulfing him with their wondrous words. When the boy reached the age of 8 he had already read the first five Harry Potter books, finishing the 850 page 5th book in only a week, and was reading so much that his 3rd grade teacher was threatening to take his books away during the school day. The young boy’s passion for books continued throughout the remainder of elementary school and middle school, and it was in 8th grade that his passion for words began to show its impacts. That year in English class the class had a unit the boy had never dealt with before: debate. Mrs. Lindsey would pass out articles about both sides of a topic each class and then divide the class into two groups to argue their assigned side, and during this unit an interesting phenomenon occurred, in that whichever team our young protagonist was on would, without fail, come out victorious in the discussions. These victories mark a second spark in the young boy’s heart, one that would smolder on