Okay, so this one is this one is both kinda funny, and a little sad that we have teachers like this. Anyways, I've been reading since before Kindergarten. Like, actually reading. So I took preschool for about two years before I actually started school. During this time, I learned to read and write. Now, when I started Kindergarten, I was already reading to myself and my dad would read things like Narnia or Harry Potter to me at night. This went on until about the time I was eight - maybe even earlier - so around 2nd grade, where I started to read on my own. But that's not the point.

Anyway, when I started Kindergarten, I was able to read and write. In fact, I could have skipped the grade just fine, but my parents didn't think that "I had enough social skills yet". But because I was already reading and writing, they wanted to take it up with my teacher, who said that she would be able to put aside a small group for me and any other kids who were like me. In the end she never did this, which basically meant that I spent Kindergarten being retaught things like the alphabet, and couldn't do anything about it.

When I got to first grade, we all thought that it would be fine. Now, this was probably a bit after I was reading chapter books by myself. I also happened to really like words, and my grandma was telling me one time how she was so shocked when she and I were talking and I used a word she didn't think I would know. Anyways, that's off track. Like I was saying, my family thought that now I would be able get the extra work I would need. This didn't happen. Instead, the teacher was so bad about handling the fact that I was so advanced, that I literally stopped reading. I refused. I mean, it was bad enough that I would even refuse to read my own name.

This attitude - that if I was smart and tried to do what I knew I could, I would get in trouble or be belittled for being smart - actually carried into second grade. I remember that that was the age they started to split us into reading and math groups. I clearly remember I was one of four kids in my reading group, and we were all reading chapter books in the class. It was around this time where I wanted to pick back up where I was on reading. So I did. And by what was probably 3rd or 4th grade I was reading at a high-school level. So yeah, that's the time I stopped reading for a year because a few crappy teachers taught me that I was "too smart".