| You
asked me about dyslexia. I thought I would send you a little story from my past.
I was reading a post on a bulletin board that was advising a lady to let her daughter
use a word processor to write and to not worry about how words are spelled. Because
if the child is thinking too much about spelling she would not be able to hold
her train of thought. This prompted a flashback to my youth...
Whoa! major flashback, I am in one of
those one person desks made out of metal with the wooden top and seat, some still
have the hole in the top right corner for holding ink bottles. It is hot, there
is no air conditioning in this small Central Texas school. The windows are open
and the chirping birds outside are interrupted by the chalk squeaks on the black
board as the teacher spells out the writing assignment.
"One page before
the bell."
I know the topic but, it doesn't really matter, I know I won't
do well.
My pencil has only been sharpened a couple of times but the eraser
is all but gone and the metal end has been squeezed together to force what little
eraser is left, to bulge past the metal edge. I am concentrating hard very hard.
I start the first sentence but I know I can't spell some of the words, even
some simple ones.
I reword the sentence and try again several times but know
some words are still wrong.
By now I have erased some places to the point
the paper is about to be torn by the metal on the pencil.
I peel the metal
edge back on my pencil with my teeth to expose more eraser. If I am careful it
may last through the class...
I reword the sentence over and over in my mind,
somehow I have to make this work.
I bite the knuckle on my right hand hard,
sometimes the pain will make the confusion go away... The teeth marks will last
for days.
I concentrate even harder as I do I grip the pencil harder and
harder till cramps fill my hand.
Still I continue on...
The ringing
bell does not bring the normal relief I feel when class is over.
My hand
is aching, I have completed almost half a page...
I try to read over the
sloppy writing quickly to look for mistakes...
I know what I wanted to say,
I knew the subject, probably better than the teacher, but I now realize this paper
makes no sense, even to me.
Head down, I turn in my paper, glancing up only
to see the teacher frown in disgust at the look of the messy page.
I want
to scream and do, only it is a silent scream of anguish and despair...
Were it not for word processors with spell-checkers
I would never have been able to author the story above. Dyslexics partly because
of their intelligence have found amazing ways of hiding their handicaps. You probably
never guessed I was dyslexic. How could you, I didn't even know. Even with these
new technologies, stories like the one above, that flash through my mind in a
few seconds, can take hours to write. However, hours are so much better than never.
Later, Dan
Daniel Willemin
1999
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