Joyanna Adams

Nobody's Opinion

Nobody Knows that “Nobody’s Perfect” :Dyslexia

Nobody Knows

Many of you may have noticed that a few posts ago, the headline said:

Nobody Reprots:

LOL! Okay, I really feel bad about this, but it’s time to fess up. I suffer from visual dyslexia, so I feel I owe my readers a…warning, one that I hope you’ll help me out with.

Most of the time spell check catches my mistakes, but, while I’m reading over what I’ve written, right after I’ve written it, if I come to a word that I’ve misspelled, my brain doesn’t catch it right away. That’s why when I looked at Reprots…it looked right to me. I KNOW how to spell it of course, but my “eyes” don’t—even when I look at it a second or third time. It’s hard for people to believe, (unless you have dyslexia too) that I don’t catch the mistake. My brain has actually already registered it as okay.  

This happens more when I type fast…for instance— I almost always spell ‘own’…’nwo’. It’s the little words give me the biggest trouble.”Saw” becomes “was.” ‘Boy’ becomes ‘yob.’  ‘On is always no.’ -‘ One’ is always ‘eno.’  And i is never before e…it’s always e before i. That’s a big one. Beleive…is the first thing that comes out of my fingers every single time.  In fact, I wish they would just change the spelling and save me some time.
****
Luckily, I had a wonderful red-headed teacher in the first grade who wrote to my parents when she realized I was having trouble reading, and in four one-hour sessions, she taught me how to read. She actually created a monster because I’ve been reading ever since..but my spelling has always given me trouble. Not the big words…the little, most important ones.
****
I was feeling pretty bad about this today, when my good friend and mentor Doug Powers (See Doug’s great work at his blogsite: The Powers That Be) saw the mistake and pointed it out to me. So, I started wondering today if dyslexia was considered some type of brain damage. I must admit, I’ve never given it much thought, because frankly, I put myself down enough. I didn’t need another excuse to berate myself every time I typed a word wrong.

So I told myself…good god woman, go look it up. So, I Googled it.

GOOD news: Lots of people suffered from dyslexia! Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Michael Faradey, Alexander Graham Bell, Leonardo da Vinci, Ansel Adams, Tommy Hilfinger, Henry Ford, William Hewlett, Charles Schwab, Ted Turner, Frank W. Woolworth, Henry Winkler, Orlando Bloom, Tom Cruise, Whoopi Goldberg, Keanu Reeves, Auguste Rodin, Pablo Picasso, George Patton, Stonewall Jackson, Cher, and John Lennon. They all suffered from ti.

(I purposely Left “ti” in — so that you can see how easy it is for me..ti..should be it. Sometimes I catch myself, sometimes I don’t.

Now…if you, my dear readers catch me misspelling words or spelling words backwards, feel free to point it out to me…I would be grateful and ever so thankful, because the more I become aware of it, hopefully the better I will be at ‘taming’ my brain into thinking that what it thinks it’s ‘seeing’ is not real.

Don’t worry about making me feel bad…you know…and I know.. that Nobody’s Perfect!

Right? Right. Besides, I can tell myself every time I screw up…that even Einstein couldn’t get all the words right. (not that he HAD to) And I also think that Picasso drew that picture of me at the top. That’s really me.  That’s exactly the look on my face when I am trying to figure out if I misspelled the word:..eyb. (bye)

For more of the list of people who have dyslexia, go Here

April 11, 2012 Posted by | Just life, Uncategorized | , , | 3 Comments