“I Have a Gift!”

Abstract

My mother laughed at me, laughed uncontrollably, until tears ran down her cheeks. I was ten years old, I cried. I had tried so hard to do well with my home work. I thought, at last, I have something to be proud of. I had given my best. I showed it to my mother. It was probably the two most important lesson of my life. Firstly, when it comes to spelling, I can not be right, secondly, to be able to laugh at myself. You see, I am dyslectic. The cause of my mother's mirth, my deep hurt, was a simple little misspelled word. I had written, Dad's old bot has gone hard cracked 'cos he left it out in the sun. Leaving a simple o out of boot had been my undoing. I must add, in retrospect, that my mother's love understanding contributed greatly to my later success. This love understanding an unbelievably crucial part of a dyslectic living a normal life. Most articles that have been written on Dyslexia have been written by non dyslectics for the simple reason that a manifestation of dyslexia the inability to write, at least in an acceptable way for publication. My aim to break that taboo; to look at it from the perspective of someone who is dyslectic, show finally, how the gift of dyslexia can be used. How has it effected me? Firstly it meant that as a child I was a slow learner. So many of the modes of learning are focused through the ability of being able to read, write comprehend quickly. I had to read something letter by letter several times, or spell it out, syllable by syllable, before I got its meaning. As I had to do the same within each sentence then each paragraph, I would lose track of what was in the former unless what I was reading provided vivid images. They had a word for it when I went to school, it was DUMB or DUNCE or STUPID--these days they are a little kinder refer to us as slow learners, or having a special learning disabilities. When I was twenty years old my mother read to me an article in a women's magazine about dyslexia. I fitted the diagnosis to a T, (or was it an P). It certainly took away a huge stigma made me feel much better, but it did not help my spelling one iota. A second aspect of poor reading that what goes in with difficulty, comes out with difficulty also, in the form of incorrect spelling untidy writing, terrifying hazards to the dyslectic in the conventional education system. The Friday tests did nothing to build my confidence. One day I managed to scrape a 20 out of 30. I was usually below 10. My teacher was so impressed, or maybe it was astounded, that she gave me a star on the honour board, usually reserved for those who had 27 or above. I cherished that one star. At school in the 1940's no one had heard of dyslexia. No one knew about it. I only knew that when we had those dreadful 100 word spelling tests I would get fifty or sixty wrong, the ones I did get right were more through good luck than good spelling, for next time many that I got right would become misspelt. Writing out corrections, five times each, used up a lot of my lunch recess times, but sadly, it never improved my spelling. A third aspect not being able to read aloud well. The horror I recall at being called upon to read aloud while the whole class tittered as I hesitated then, in desperation, guessed at a word that didn't make anything of itself for me, I guessed wrong. I still feel the embarrassment when I read, And the bloody horse would not stop. for and the bolting horse would not stop. I was in my fifth year at the time. It made sense to me, being a farm boy! Or the time in first year when reading my first primer with pictures of cats mats chickens in it, I spelt out H-E-N, chook. Anybody could see that it was a picture of a chook!