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howeirdBeen thinking about posting something about this for years. I've mentioned parts of it here and there.
When I was going to grade school in the mid-50s, I loved to read, but was slowed down enormously by what my teachers said was just a lack of concentration, but which I know now is two forms of dyslexia. Make that three.
The first symptom was not being sure if "d" was D or B and if "b" was D or B. q and p were also confusing but not as much because q is not that common in a grade school reader. Unlike many dyslexics, I did not see R as mirror image, but I did have trouble remembering which direction to start writing an S and an e.
Another symptom is I would write words with the letters out of order. Teachers said I was thinking faster than I could write. Maybe so, but it was another form of dyslexia.
And the third one came later in life, and is getting worse as I grow older. I do not touch type. I tried to learn once, but by that time I could "hunt and peck" 100 wpm and 5 wpm the "right way" was very frustrating. And I am not good at memorizing things like keyboard layouts. What has been occurring more and more is I will look at the screen, and discover that the keys I saw my fingers hit were not the keys they actually hit. I *knew* I hit the right keys (or wrong keys) but different characters would sometimes appear on the screen. Sometimes I catch it before it happens (the last three times I typed "dyslexic" my finger went to the s instead of the d). Backspace is my friend. Spellchecker is my savior.
I still read much more slowly than most people I know. Sometimes whole words shift positions in a sentence. Often the word that I want to see (a word I like better) takes the place of the word on the page. It's always a similar word. I will lose my place on the page, and have to hunt around for it. I may be a line off, or several paragraphs away.
When email made the @ sign popular, it took me a year or more to be able to draw one by hand.
This is a sour grapes entry. I know if I had been born 10 years ago instead of 60, my kindergarten or first grade teacher would have caught the dyslexia, I would have been given extra help reading, and would read faster and with better comprehension and retention today. My whole life might have turned out completely differently. But that's a sci-fi novel in iteslef.
When I was going to grade school in the mid-50s, I loved to read, but was slowed down enormously by what my teachers said was just a lack of concentration, but which I know now is two forms of dyslexia. Make that three.
The first symptom was not being sure if "d" was D or B and if "b" was D or B. q and p were also confusing but not as much because q is not that common in a grade school reader. Unlike many dyslexics, I did not see R as mirror image, but I did have trouble remembering which direction to start writing an S and an e.
Another symptom is I would write words with the letters out of order. Teachers said I was thinking faster than I could write. Maybe so, but it was another form of dyslexia.
And the third one came later in life, and is getting worse as I grow older. I do not touch type. I tried to learn once, but by that time I could "hunt and peck" 100 wpm and 5 wpm the "right way" was very frustrating. And I am not good at memorizing things like keyboard layouts. What has been occurring more and more is I will look at the screen, and discover that the keys I saw my fingers hit were not the keys they actually hit. I *knew* I hit the right keys (or wrong keys) but different characters would sometimes appear on the screen. Sometimes I catch it before it happens (the last three times I typed "dyslexic" my finger went to the s instead of the d). Backspace is my friend. Spellchecker is my savior.
I still read much more slowly than most people I know. Sometimes whole words shift positions in a sentence. Often the word that I want to see (a word I like better) takes the place of the word on the page. It's always a similar word. I will lose my place on the page, and have to hunt around for it. I may be a line off, or several paragraphs away.
When email made the @ sign popular, it took me a year or more to be able to draw one by hand.
This is a sour grapes entry. I know if I had been born 10 years ago instead of 60, my kindergarten or first grade teacher would have caught the dyslexia, I would have been given extra help reading, and would read faster and with better comprehension and retention today. My whole life might have turned out completely differently. But that's a sci-fi novel in iteslef.
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