Craziest Cajun Football Tale

Football. Dyslexia. A team against all odds.

Hatcher has big football dreams. He’s going to be a play-calling star. A legend. So, he joins a city youth team with hopes of helping them design plays to win a championship. But when his inability to read plays correctly gets him cut to the B-team––a group of scrappy misfits––his dream of winning turns to surviving a season of Cajun craziness.

Enter cousin Heatha who, forced to live with them, discovers Hatcher’s real obstacle––he has dyslexia.

How can latch-key Hatcher and Heatha work together to defy the odds? Because there’s no team they want to beat more than the A-team.

How’d this happen?

Like with anything worth while in life, putting yourself out there is scary. It comes with fear, uncertainty and the potential for rejection. In other words … FAILURE.

And believe me, I have FAILED several times trying to get this crazy tale ready for someone to say “YES.”

Someone recently shared with me a good POV on failure. “Failure is like a bruise.” I only wish that future me would remind me of this over and over, each time I suffer doubt, insecurity and fear (yes, that word seems to be a regular when it comes to anything I create). Will people like it? Who will throw darts? In time, that bruise heals and you hold your head up and go.

And not only is this book coming out in the fall, but I also get to work closely with the illustrator who happens to live in the same house and share the same last name … my talented teen daughter, Melina Alipio.

Why do I think this story is worthy of telling?

I didn’t realize that I had a dyslexic mind until––thanks to Google––I did some lengthy research into why, like myself, my daughter was so often confused at instructions in her early years of school. Example, getting everything correct on the front of a test and everything wrong on the back sent signals that something was off.

So realizing that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, I worked with her mother to do everything possible to better understand our daughter’s learning process … in other words, the combined ADD/ADHD brain, which we both have.

As a kid in the 80s, dyslexia wasn’t really much of a thing. I often mixed up words when reading and speaking (forgive me because I still do this), had difficulty paying attention when reading (I often read things twice), lost things frequently, and was hyper-focused on tasks (yet helpful in the tedious of my day job). The list went on and on.

That’s why this story, a story about two latch-key kids struggle to deal with dyslexia during a season of cajun football craziness is important to share. Because kids with ADD/ADHD, like me, need to see themselves on the page.

And no child should ever “fear” what their brain is going to do or not do correctly next.

Now … who’s ready for some fall ball?

(Leave a comment if you’d like to read more)