Volume 3, Issue 7, page 8

mims, Elisha, Methuselan -- even a name like
Chedorlaomer.

Tne teacher turns to the mother when Giana
has been removed from tue Biole. And Giana has
veen removed from the Bible, ratner than the
Biole from Giana. If tney are not separated,
Giana will continue reading, as if she can't
stop. "I don't quite see," begins tne teacher.
"We can't see eitner," says tne mother, a
note of real exasperation in her face. "We
can't see where she gets it. Is she possessed?"
But the teacher can't accept the idea of
any sort of "possession". She is free of superstition. "I can't quite see," the teacher
goes on, "now she has been able to learn to
read so well before sae has even started
school."
"She's always read that well," the mother
insists.
"Then I can't see way you should mind. One
day she'll quit reading signs."
"You don't see, not yet," says the mother,
"Sony her father and I are troubled. Write
something on tne blackboard, anything, with
her name in it."
Tne teacher, puzzled, wrote: "Have you a
coat and hat, Gian?"
Giana read quickly, looking at the teacher, then at tier mother.
"I still don't see . . ." regan the puzzled
teacher.
"Sue read her own name!" the mother cries,
apparently on the verge of nysteria. "She read
her own name, but did you see anytning different in the way she read it?"
Possioly the teacher felt a chill at this
point. Sne tnougnt back. Giana had read her
own name in the sentence on the board exactly
as she nad read "Chederlaomer".
"My Giana," the mother cries, voicing the
thing she has wen Holding oack in the nape
that the teacher would notice, and possibly
explain, and show how Giana can be helped,
"doesn't even know her own name when she nears
it. We touch her, and point, or lead her, oecause she doesn't know ner own name. Sne nas
never learned it. That's why sne reads it exactly as sne reads everything else."
"Leave her," says the teacher. "We don't
know. But there are so many things we don't
know about our severely retarded. We don't
know much, really, about our normal -- or even
ourselves."
So the mother leaves, and the teacher devotes as much time as sne can to unraveling
the strings wnicn control Giana.

First, the teacher writes the name, "Gian",
on tne blackuoard. Gian learns