Reading Backwards

It's a funny thing, reading backwards. Since I was a child comfortable in my mother's lap looking at brightly colored pages, words have been magic. A door to worlds in which anything was possible and every dream could come true. Oh how I wanted to craft those words! Create those worlds! Give me a pen, give me paper, give me words! I knew young, so very young that I wanted to write, to create. From the moment I knew that the whole ballet thing just wasn't going to work out I wanted to be an author, a journalist someone who opened those doors and let in magic. However, for me, reading those words and deciphering them turned into the greatest and most defining battle of my life.

I did not know until I was twenty years old the reasons it took me three times as long to read something as it did someone else, I didn't know until I was twenty why just the thought of mathmatics made me feel ill, or why I would cry during tests. I didn't know I could enjoy learning or be a good student until I was twenty five. Life is funny that way, I suppose. No one ever looked to see, when I was seven years old and still could not read even the simplest of words and asked why not? Dyslexia.

Dyslexia, it seems as if it should be an easy thing to figure out, children with dyslexia read upside down and backwards right? They see the word OIL as 710 don't they? Easy.

No, not easy.

It was, perhaps, just too obvious that I was not stupid. I have a memory that could kill an elephant, which was my one saving grace. My vocabulary is impeccable, learning new words spends chills of delight scurrying up my spine. Even as a girl I knew grammar, speech, the how's and why's of language. However to read them seemed impossible. While others saw words as they appeared, I saw alphabet soup, a mixed, mashed jumble of letters and numbers that made no sense. It is obvious that I can read now and that is due to one of the most humiliating experiences of my life. One that should never have happened, but in a strange way I'm glad it did.

In third grade, I still couldn't read. That was awful enough; and good Lord I hope they've stopped this; we were reading in class you know , round robin reading where every one takes a turn.

Then the teacher got to me.

I couldn't even follow along with everyone else, the words were a jumble and I was panicked. I remember the feeling, as if I were going to vomit right there, my face was flush and my hands were shaking and the teacher told me to read from where the previous student had left off. Unfortunatly, I had no clue. There I was eight years old red faced and embarrassed standing in front of a class of twenty five or so other kids who were snickering. Bad? Oh Yes, but it got worse. My teacher, I'll never forget her, stood across the room and said I was, stupid, lazy, and I would never read, then she told me to sit down. Which I did humiliated beyond my years. To this day that stings, it makes my eyes water for that little girl who has never forgotten those words and took them for years much too much to heart.

While stupid and lazy I'd heard before, when that woman said I would l never read, that would never be able to open that magic door for myself, she sent me on a mission. Rage more than anything fuled my obsession to prove that witch wrong. So I checked out every book in the library I could get my hands on, I picked up my father's copy of The Army of the Potomac and I read. I read until my head hurt, until my stomach ached

I read until I could understand.

Which was a feat of endurance. Eventually I was able to do it, to train my brain to read to see a symblance of what other brains 'saw'. It wasn't perfect, math was still beyond my grasp, but I could read!

As magnificent a feat as that is, I still can not spell. Not one iota. Spell check and dictionaries are more like friends than tools. They enable me to do something that I can not do alone. Create those things and those worlds which so enthralled me as a child.

Children of my generation, that of twenty years or so ago coming up in a world where we still had great Saturday morning cartoons and the Cosby show were taught and taught one way. Those of us who didn't get it were labled, dumb, lazy, or simply impossible. Lazy. That was the one that got me the most. I struggled every day, every moment there was a book in front of me to figure out what it said. Numbers, math, ALGEBRA! (Ugh), I would spend hours, hours doing homework, trying to learn, trying to figure it out. Eventually, you get tired, you're brain and your soul ache after so long, after so much struggle.

Who wants to continue to struggle to do things that make them feel inadequte? My report cards came home with D's and F's. I didn't pass a math class until I was twenty five years old and in college and even then it took nine hours a week of tutoring and more hours of study than I'd like to recall.

There is so much now about dyslexia. The average person knows the word and knows something about the disease. It is a knowledge I envy. Perhaps it would have saved that child the disgrace and humiliation of being called out in front of an entire class. Perhaps I would have pursued a college degree earlier in life if I knew there were skills, classes, accomodations for my disability. However, there as still such gaps in knowledge.

Most things are written for and about children with dyslexia.

There is support, but I am hesitant to seek it. I am solitary in nature and am still rather shy about saying out loud that I have dyslexia. One great reasource for parents, as well as for yourself is the website, www.dyslexiamentor.com

On which I found this information:

Ronald D. Davis was labeled "retarded" until his early teens. He was functionally illiterate until age 38. After completing technical courses, he became a successful engineer, artist, and businessman. He established the Reading Research Council's Dyslexia Correction® Center in 1982. His book, The Gift of Dyslexia, has been published in major languages throughout the world.

In it he states:

"Dyslexia is not a complexity; it is a compound of simple factors which can be dealt with step by step."

"Dyslexia is not the result of a genetic flaw or nerve damage. It is not caused by a malformation of the brain, inner ear, or eyes. Dyslexia is a product of thought and a special way of reacting to confusion. It is not limited to reversals of letters and words--a common misconception."

I am an adult dyslexic and do not endorse any one program. I am somone who went their entire school career without knowlege that there was a problem to be addressed. There are programs and books and all sorts of "help" available. However, how do I apply those after thirty years of teaching myself?

As it is I've spent my entire life reading backwards.