| Read this article in Spanish | 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
2009
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