I have grown up in some very strange times that confuse me about what freedom is all about. I was born in the mid-50s and I'm still kicking as they say, but I must tell you not as high as I used to. 

I remember when if a girl got pregnant out of wedlock she was ostracized by the community and abandoned by her family. Now it's not only preferred by the masses that she keeps it, but they try and legislate her right to choose.  I have never thought killing an unborn Child should be used as a form of birth control so I'm not confused about why people feel so strongly about abortion, but what I am confused about is the changes in what is considered right and wrong in this case. I am also highly confused about why someone's right to choose to keep a baby or not keeping a baby is considered so horrible. I would understand it if they gave a better alternative then Abortion to the poor girl who is going through so much emotion and heartache. I have never heard of a group of the right to life organizations building orphanages or making adoption organizations for this specific purpose. I see people so profoundly entrenched in a faith that would condone the murdering of doctors that perform abortions and not give alternative choices to those that seek abortions because they think it is their only recourse to an unwanted pregnancy. When you give someone a choice you have to give them a better choice than they are looking at. You have to give them a choice that gives them dignity in that choice and you have to make it readily available to them without any consequences otherwise you don't give that person a choice.

I also don't understand the phrase that guns don't kill people. Yes, I agree that a gun on a shelf never touched will hurt no one. The thing that I don't understand is how you can’t see that if there was never a gun on the shelf we wouldn't be having this conversation. I do however believe in the privilege for everyone to own a firearm if they are law-abiding and mentally competent to do so. The other thing I don't understand is all of those people who rightly owned guns and have no malice in their hearts for anyone want absolutely everyone in the world to own a gun. I know people that I am glad that they own a gun most of them are police officers and law enforcement personnel. I also have appreciated and love the right and privilege to hunt however I have never been a sports Hunter, when I go hunting it is for food and not the thrill of killing. As a matter of fact, I pray and give thanks to God for the animal that I harvest and also feel some anguish for killing one of God's creatures. Yes, you can call me a bleeding heart because I do have one and I intend to defend my family because they are my heart. We have seen too many mentally ill people obtain guns legally I feel that this must stop. My right to owning a weapon does not trump any one's right to safety however I personally feel that my right to own a firearm is not the problem I feel that our laws are not being enforced properly and if you are on a terrorist watch list you should never be able to legally purchase a gun in the United States. If you are not mentally stable enough to own a firearm you should not be able to legally purchase a firearm in the United States. The excuse that criminals can find a gun illegally is not only absurd it is inhumane to use such an excuse to justify anyone killing someone in a country that is free minded people can come together and create the proper solutions without taking away anyone's freedom.

I also believe in the right of choice of just about anything and everything. Yes, I do believe you have the choice to be stupid, but I believe the only stupid choice is to close your mind down and not consider everyone and what they have to say. I don't think that our government is perfect and I definitely don't think the candidates running for president are our best choices. I do however think that they represent what our country has come to in these days of no compromise and no compassion. It's okay to be hateful to one another in a political campaign and its okay to call your neighbor stupid or ignorant or uneducated because he likes the opposite candidate to your choice. I see a country and a great division and the choices that we may have made this rip in the fabric of America, not to leave out those of you who say I don't vote so it's not my fault, it's more your fault that it is those that vote. A wise man once said that no one from a foreign land could set foot on this nation and destroy the ideas and the democracy that we have created, he said that it would have to come from within the United States itself, if we were to lose this great country that we have made and fought for these many years. The divisions in our country have always been this wide and we have been able to build bridges of compromise across the divisions of political ideology, religion, and philosophy to keep this country running straight and narrow toward a positive future. Every time someone has put obstacles in our way we have been able to remove those obstacles because we work together and compromised and made this country a better place for every single human being occupying our land. I see just as I did in the 60s people of color feeling as if they are being targeted by the very government that we instituted to protect them and no one should ever have that feeling. I am a white male and definitely over 21 and 

I have felt discriminated against my entire life because I did not come from an affluent family, no my family didn't have money and they didn't have power so everyone thought they could roll right over the top of me without any opposition. Those of you that know me know that's not the case. I tried to stand up for what is right and that doesn't mean that I think that everything is in black and white everything has a colorful story to its core and I try to see the entire picture before I make my decisions.

I met a gentleman just the other day that explained to me that he learned better with his hands than he ever did with his eyes, in other words, he had trouble reading.  I guess I'm getting ahead of my story here, so let me start from the beginning.

I knew from a very early age I saw the world differently than others. I could take things apart and put them back together much easier than I could read a book. I remember sitting down on the couch with my mother going over my spelling words[G1] .  I would misspell them knowing that I had all of the letters in the word but did not put them in their proper order or I would try and spell the word before or after that particular word. Things just didn't look the same to me as they did to my mother. I learned that if I concentrated with all my might and everything that was within me on each letter and each word in its own turn I could see them as others saw them. If I lost concentration or didn't try hard enough things would look almost backward to me. I would try to read the assigned books that we had for each class each year.  It would take me so long to read one book out of the 5 to 10 that we were supposed to read that I started using Cliff notes and I could barely keep up.  I guess my teachers probably thought I was not very smart.[G2] [G3] 

It wasn't until I got into junior high and high school that I figured out that people read a book with two minds, one that spoke the words and the other mind was like a movie that went on in your head showing you the picture of what was going on according to what you were reading. I had to concentrate so hard on being able to read each word in each sentence that I was losing the ability to comprehend it as just a fictional book and to enjoy it. It took me much longer than high school to figure out how to do that. Yes, I could read comic books because of the pictures, and the fact that the words were not in huge paragraphs, they were just what the character was saying or doing in that particular frame and that made it much easier for me to understand. It wasn't until I started reading Disney news magazines that I could glimpse that movie within my mind of what I was reading and I could concentrate as much on one side of the equation as I could the other. It was still extremely hard and time consuming for me. I made a major breakthrough when I started reading J.K. Rowling’s series about Harry Potter. I had watched the movies so I had the foresight of the movies to help me with the picture going on in my mind of what I was reading.  It was like an epiphany for me to actually see in my mind’s eye for the very first time complete scenes and complete stories of what I was reading on the page.  It was wonderful to finally understand how someone could enjoy reading a book because I never could until then.

The gentleman that I had met was telling me the story of myself. He said that he had dyslexia and I believe with all my heart, even though it's never been diagnosed, that that is what I have. He explained to me that he learned so much more quickly by touch than he ever did by reading anything and that was my story. He explained to me how this dyslexia would come and go according to how much concentration he put into it at the time, keeping his mind and his eyesight straight. It's exactly how I have to do things. I jokingly shook his hand and said: [G4] “hello long-lost brother”.  He laughed too because he knew what I meant. I told him of the story about an actor who had written a screenplay about a wrestler and he wanted to do a read through with his friends. He called on me to read a particular part and I told him that I was embarrassed about it but that reading was hard for me. He looked at me and he said “you have dyslexia, don't you” and I kind of took a step back and realized that for the first time I admitted it in public. He said, [G5] “that's okay, I will give you a few minutes to read over your lines and help you with them”. This made me determined to find a way to beat my affliction and enjoy reading.

I now understand that there are so many actors, writers and others that enjoy the written word that has dyslexia. I have never had anyone help me with my affliction[G6] . Teachers nor doctors really understand it when I was in school. I have gone it alone and tried to understand and find out how to read and enjoy reading without having to concentrate so hard. Even though it is easier now than it ever has been, it is still extremely hard work for me to read.  I have now read and finished a few books from cover to cover.  I never could do that before.  I love the Harry Potter series and love to read them. I read and now write blogs, as well as other literature and I can actually say I read and enjoy it.[G7] 

I can remember people telling me that they had just bought a huge novel a few weeks ago and they had read it from cover to cover and at that time I'm thinking, you're a liar, how can you read a book like that in just weeks. It takes me months, if not years to get through a book that thick. Now I can get through a standard novel within about 60 days, maybe sometimes a little longer, but in a reasonable length of time so that I don't forget what happened at the beginning of the book by the time I get to the end of the book. To me, that is a miracle and, yes, I do mean a miracle. I love to write, I love to read and, by doing so, it has opened up an entire world to me that used to be closed. I always read the short synopsis of books but there were always those books out there that I'd always wanted to read, like books about my hero Walt Disney or A.A. Milne’s The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, and I just couldn't. It wasn't that I didn't try because I did but just calling out words is not reading. It was difficult to concentrate so hard to keep everything in its proper alignment so that you could read a couple of words or a sentence and then have to concentrate again to read the next line but you didn't have the strength of mind to carry on.

Just to give you an inkling of how hard it was, have you ever tried to make an object move with your mind and you’re concentrating so hard to get it to move, [G8] you get a headache. That is what I went through, that is why school was so hard for me.  I don't know if it's age or if it was the trying over and over again that helped me defeat my problem. Don't get me wrong, I have not completely defeated it because if I do not concentrate on what I'm reading I will transpose letters, words and even sentences, so you see, I still have to work at it. It's so much easier today than when I was a child in school. It's as if someone turned the light on in the room and I can see the written page.

So you see the man (at the beginning of my story) that learned with his hands better than from a book, he and I have something in common, we both have dyslexia. This is a story that teachers and doctors alike should be aware of because, as a kid, you don’t know you have this problem, and you are not able to explain it to anyone.  Many children have probably gone undiagnosed just because they could not tell anyone what was wrong.

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