From the time I could talk until my sophomore year in high school I wanted to be a nurse just like my mom. When I got sick and had to miss school, I didn’t stay home. My mom took me to work with her and I got to see first hand what nurses do. I thought my mom was hero and still do, but the desire to be a nurse started fading my 10th grade year in high school when I got to know Bambi.
Bambi was the school bully and had few true friends; most of the kids that were here friends were scared not to be her friends. Bambi only bothered me once and I stood up to her, so after that we were friends.
The thing about Bambi was she was the only kid in elementary school, junior high and high school that had to see the speech teacher on a regular basis. When I was in school that’s what we were called, the speech teacher. Bambi’s speech impairments were so severe that she was unintelligible until our 7th grade year. Our 7th grade year was when I had my run-in with Bambi and I noticed I could understand her, but she still mis -pronounced a lot of words.
I started noticing in junior high that the teachers did not take Bambi seriously, and half of the time did not even honor her questions with an answer. Instead of trying to help Bambi they either ignored her or sent her on one errand after the other to keep her busy. By the time we got to high school they did not even make her go to class, she worked in the office or cafeteria. Bambi’s only true friend was the speech teacher, and sadly I can’t even remember her name. I never had much contact with her. I only remember having my hearing tested once and she was the on that performed the test.
I would see Bambi and the speech teacher walking down the halls, laughing and talking. She never did that with any of our other teachers.
My 10th grade year the speech teacher died from throat cancer and Bambi dropped out of high school. I can’t remember the last time that I saw her. I knew then that I didn’t want to be a nurse, but I wanted to work with kids like Bambi instead. I still did not know what a speech pathologist was, I was under the impression that the woman that worked with Bambi was just a special teacher and I did not want to be a teacher.
It all came together my senior year. I was doing an internship at the elementary school and the principal asked me what I wanted to be. I told him I wanted to work with kids with speech impairments, but I did not want to be a teacher or strictly in the medical field. He told me my only other option was a speech pathologist. I did a little checking and discovered what all I could do if I became a speech pathologist and my mind has been made up ever since.