Talking, reading, writting

I spend a lot of time inside my head. I have never been very loquacious.
My parents said that I was a colicky baby until they visited some for a night. Not having anywhere else to put me they put me in the bathtub for the night. Apparently the echoes had an affect, I was quiet from then on.
At nine months I just got up an walked. I did not talk until I was three. For the last couple of years I have wondered if I would be diagnosed as autistic now a days. I do tend toward being overwhelmed in a crowded noisy environment. I seldom talk to myself. I have many times gone for more than 24 hours without a single utterance.
I do not remember learning to read. I do remember spending what seemed like hours standing up while each child in the room read from the McGuffey Reader, "See Dick run." It seems to me that I had finished the book before the second reader finished their page. Nothing happens! One year in the fifth grade during Library Week I read five books in their entirety. Some of the reading was done by opening a book inside the book I was supposed to be reading in class. My fifth grade teacher was pretty understanding when she caught me. She was also the on that read all of "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis to the class. I did not remember the title until my wife re-introduced me to the Narnia Series. I did remember whole swaths of the story. I read voraciously including anything I could get my hands on about dinosaurs and astronomy. My parents subscribed to the "All About" book club.Each month we got a book such as "All About Atoms", I swallowed them whole. During my formative years children were not allowed to check out books from the adult section without a signed note from their parents saying that they were reading at a level high enough to understand. I just walked in and checked out the books I wanted with nary a question. By the time I was twelve I had pretty much abandoned the children's section. In Biology in my sophomore year I read the chapter on Monday and took the test on Friday, usually getting an A. I repeated that pattern for Physics, Mechanics in college, in fact after a couple of weeks I only showed up to class for the Friday tests, I got a reputation for never attending class while acing them. It was only that and one other class that I skipped regularly. I graduated high school with a 2.1 grade point.
I kind of backed into writing with script. I was in the second grade in North Carolina. They taught script in the third grade. During that summer we moved to Massachusetts where they taught script in the second grade. So entering the third grade in Arlington I was expected to do my assignments with script. Again I got an understanding teacher who after talking to my mother created script worksheets for me as homework. I guess you can say that I learned script with self study. I do remember working on those work sheets, practicing each letter over and over. Yes, I had to turn them in to the teacher to show I had done them.
The Arlington, Massachusetts school district at that time offered recorder classes in the third grade. It was voluntary and I volunteered. I recall that my brother Bill did also. He was in the same grade as me since I had been held back in the first grade. I had been in three different schools the first year. Bill was held back later. As I recall I did try to learn to play. After about three or four weeks the teacher contacted my mother telling her that I did not have the talent. I stopped taking recorder. I have since learned that I cannot play. My ear is terrible, I simply cannot hear if I am playing the right note. Holding a rhythm is also an exercise in futility. I think Bill continued. One of the few childhood stories from my mother is that her mother made her take violin lessons for years, even though her teacher kept telling my grandmother that she had no ear or talent.
While I cannot play and sing poorly I do dance. My first public performance of memory was a minuet in assembly in I think the fourth grade. I loved it.