Thanks for your story Brian, I see some similarities with my own, that I might write one day. Your experience with reading sounds like mine with maths, when it came time for me to study Engineering at Uni, my maths was woefully short. My attention, like yours was elsewhere in school. I needed to do extra maths to qualify for entry to Uni, I am glad they gave me the chance thinking back, but when the maths finally clicked I became a mathematical machine. I am about ten years behind you but in those days, things didn't change as much in ten years as they obviously do now, I remember a lot of the same things as a kid. A major male figure in my life, who stood in for my Dad, was someone I really feared but much respected, my Grandad, born in 1900, fought in two world wars, and worked as an Engineer in the Shipyards until he was nearly seventy. He gave me "Initiative" as he called it, by a very swift physical prompt if I ever appeared to not know what to do, when helping him fix things like bikes and whatever, "Use your initiative", he'd bark, with a clout. Seemed cruel to me at the time but I am grateful for it.