Simply K

Grade 9, English Literature. While the rest of the class was busy pretending to love Macbeth (they were all terrified of our Lit teacher), I was locked on to the birds outside the window, convinced their chirping was far more enlightening than whatever was happening on the chalkboard. Most teachers ignored me. Rumors floated around that I spent my time daydreaming and probably bribing teachers to pass my exams. But that day, my Literature teacher finally snapped.

In front of the whole co-ed class she yelled: “If you like the birds so much, I can open the window and send you there.”

Naively, I replied: “It’s not the birds… I’m sure I just saw a grey parrot out there. Never seen one before.”

She thought I was mocking her. I wasn’t. But off to the principal’s office I went anyway.

The principal called my mother (god bless her, she always gave them her number instead of dads!) Her response? “It’s okay, Mr. Do what you want — I’ve already washed my hands of him.”

Charming. But to be fair, she’d already given up on me in Grade 8. That was when she discovered I had skipped every single math class at my old school because I had “forgotten”—very deliberately—to do my homework. I’d been caned twice before, but by the third strike I was finished. I told my brother Ahmed, and let’s just say my math teacher ended up leaving school in a wheelchair. The school politely asked me to get out the following year. (It cost my dad a hefty bribe to let me stay until finals were over.)

The irony? I actually loved English Literature. Macbeth was my jam, and I scored an A. Meanwhile, Physics and Math were complete disasters. My logic was simple: I wasn’t going to be an astronaut, so why bother with Physics? And Math was fine until the alphabets decided to marry the numbers and spawn the cursed offspring known as Algebra. From that point on, I failed those two subjects with flying colors every single year..

The truth is, I didn’t know ADHD was a thing. Neither did Mum. Neither did anyone. They all assumed I was just a spoiled brat who couldn’t be bothered with certain subjects. Yet I could easily pull As and Bs in history, psychology, biology, economics, and, of course, PE.

PE was sacred. I once even showed up to play in a football match against another school—while I was technically on a sick day. PE always landed in the last two sessions of school on Tuesdays. Naturally, the teachers came to watch that particular game, since it was a school championship. That small little detail, my brain had conveniently ignored. Busted.

Looking back, that was the moment I realized I wasn’t built to be “normal.” And honestly, normal never looked all that interesting anyway.