--or "late bloomer" although this is so at odds with my scholastic prowess as to be an easy secret to keep (mostly). for example, i taught myself to read by looking over my mother's shoulder as she read out loud to my year-older brother (the "average", "normal" one). i always made straight A's & picked things up so readily that my study practice became to simply read the textbook at the beginning of the year cover to cover, & never open it again.
but in fact i was otherwise backwards, & felt it keenly. i had the most intense awkwardness with girls, finally learned to swim myself the summer i was 21, having only gotten my driver's license the year before; lived at home (with one short exception) until i was 28 (the year i got my first full-time job); & married at 41 (younger than Yeats, at any rate, but many of my contemporaries were already divorced or raising families by that time).
i couldn't explain it, even to myself, but i finally did come to accept that there is no universal timetable for humans, & the time for me was the right time for me if i was going to at all.
"I have had to learn the simplest things
last. Which made for difficulties."
--Charles Olson
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