One day Thomas Edison came home and gave
a paper to his mother. He told her, “My teacher
gave this paper to me and told me to only give
it to my mother.”
His mother’s eyes were tearful as she read the
letter out loud to her child: Your son is a
genius. This school is too small for him and
doesn’t have enough good teachers for
training him. Please teach him yourself.
Many many years after Edison’s mother died
and he was now one of the greatest inventors
of the century, one day he was looking through
old family things. Suddenly he saw a folded
paper in the corner of a drawer in a desk. He
took it and opened it up. On the paper was
written: Your son is addled [mentally ill]. We
won’t let him come to school any more.
Edison cried for hours and then he wrote in his
diary: “Thomas Alva Edison was an addled
child that, by a hero mother, became the
genius of the century.