When
I was younger I couldn’t read very well. In second grade I was put in a program
for students who weren’t reading at grade level. If you know me now, you’ll
find that very surprising, but it’s true. Now I can’t be sure why, but it’s
most likely because of the cerebral palsy, which I’ve had since birth, playing
haywire with my visual-spatial skills. I knew what the words meant; I just
couldn’t make sense of them on the page. I had the same issue with comics until
perhaps tenth grade, putting the images in proper order was something my brain
just couldn’t handle.
The same, strangely enough, could not be
said for film. Although it’s a very visual medium, I always “got it”, the story
it was trying to tell, even the shot composition. It’s like going down a corridor
of double-bolted doors and finding one that’s miraculously open.
