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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