Of course, I was never dyslexic—I was just a bit smart in the wrong ways but slow in those things they thought important at the time. I was just a working-class kid with a working-class brain who wanted to learn everything, but never when they wanted to teach it, nor how they wanted it learned.

I was also the last kid at school to stop believing in Santa Claus.
“But where do all them Christmas presents come from then,” I protested hopelessly in the schoolyard.
“It’s yer mum and dad. They buy ‘em and hide ‘em,” my chiding friends insisted.
“Don’t be bloody silly,” I sneered. “They’re too poor to go buyin’ all that stuff.”
    In the end I caused such embarrassment that my mother had to take me on her knee and confess all. Somehow I believed her, even though it was now apparent that she’d been lying to me all my life.
“And I suppose the same goes for the Easter Bunny, huh?”
“‘Fraid so,” she said.