Disclaimer: The following write up is entirely subjective, what professionals would call anecdotal. If you're here, I figure you're interested in dyslexia, and if you've never met one, now you have. Hooray for these writeups on
dyslexia. There are a lot of
people like me who have a
mild form of this
difficulty, not all cases are the
worst extreme. I'd like to tell how it has
affected me all my life.
The
worst part was knowing there was
something different about me, but not knowing what it was. Sometimes I felt so
stupid, I mean shouldn't a kid be able to remember his parents'
birthdays? And telling
directions to some one else, the joke got to be "
Turn left, No your other left". I know it seems that
dialing the telephone should be the easiest thing in the world, but once I turn away from the page with the numbers and try to punch them in to the
telephone, it some times takes 3 or 4 or more tries. Dialing a group of people on a phone list for me is
torture, and
frustration adds to the difficulty by
accentuating the problems. Even though I now type for my living, I can't
touch type. I can't remember the keys, I can type like crazy when I look at my fingers, and I have good hand eye coordination so I can get out my thoughts now. I cannot write in script. My printing is barely legible. Anyone who's read my writeups can attest to my
spelling trouble. The correct and the incorrect don't have enough difference between them for me to remember.
There are
good things about having this kind of
brain though. I did
construction for many years and there are a lot of people with the same kind of difficulties with
language arts in the
manual arts field. I can discuss at length detailed parts of things that don't exist yet. My partner and I were talking one day about the as yet
unbuilt roof, pointing up in to empty space and the home owner who was listening said "You guys can see things that aren't there!", but of course it was second nature to us.
My dad has it, he told me later in life. I have read it is more prevalent in men than women. I discovered what dyslexia was and that it affected me in my middle 20's. The revelation was staggering. I finally understood how my brain worked. I wasn't stupid or broken, just different, and I am too. I process information differently, I can't memorize on demand. I won't remember your name on the first try, ever unless or until something significant happens. I remember all the lyrics from my childhood music records, from age 2. I remember my big brother's Army serial number because I had to write on the letters I sent him as a kid, I have a hard time remembering my son's birth date. If an event only happens once a year, I can't get it to stick in there. Music makes it easier to remember things. I'm a whiz with the names of old long dead actors I saw in black and white movies, I can't remember the names of my children's
classmates. I am great at problem solving, answer divining, solution finding, if I put something out of sight, it's out of mind. I am glad there is more awareness in the
schools to help the
little kids not think they're
stupid.
My son made his 5's backwards for a long time. He holds the pencil funny, we never could get him to grip it like the other kids do. I wonder about him. He doesn't show any other outward signs so far. I still sometimes get the order of numbers or letters in words wrong. Knowing what's going on makes it a lot more tolerable.