In kindergarten I was identified as a gifted child. But in the second grade, my teacher was confused. If this child is so gifted, why can't he read and write? I was pulled from the gifted program for the rest of the year or until my spelling and reading improved. In the third grade I was allowed to return to the gifted program, even though I was still at a first grade reading level and was getting worse than an F in spelling. My difficulties with reading and spelling continue to this day. I read about half the speed of a normal person and lean heavilly on my spell checker.

When I started college, an extremely observant testing proctor noticed that my spelling was not wrong, it was just not correct. All the letters where there, they were just in the wrong place. And I printed like a first grader. He asked me why I didn't write (cursive). I told him that I can't read it. Well I can read it, but not as well as printing. The proctor recommended that I go in for a learning disability assessment. Specificly Dyslexia. Guess what! I am gifted, I'm also dyslexic. My IQ is about 130, not quite a genius, but still smarter than the average bear.

Dyslexia is a hidden disability. Dyslexics don't have missing parts, we don't shake or stumble, too look at a dyslexic, you would never guess that he had a problem. Dyslexia has a broad range of symptoms but over all, the dyslexic brain is just wired differently. When people are first learning to read, we start with the alphabet. Individual letters, that is no problem. But as we expand our written vocabularies, we stop recognizing words as a series of individual letters and start seeing the word as autonomous units. Dyslexics don't always do that. Words, to a dyslexic, are collections of letters and the direction/orientation and order of those letters is not that important. A dyslexic may see the letter "m" as "rr" or "w." The letter "n" easily turns in to "ri", "ir", "u" or even "c."

Dyslexia is not limited to written words. My particular flavor of Dyslexia leaves me without the ability to tell left from right. I know that my Left Hand is on the left and my Right Hand is on the right. But if I sit on my hands and try to give directions or read a map. I'm just totally lost. Most people don't get it, how can you not know the difference between left and right? It's like being color blind. A color blind person can't tell the difference between Blue, Brown, and Gray. I have no problem with basic colors, but left and right... that's an issue. Left is the hand that make an L. That's not the problem, I know the names of my hands, I just don't feel the directions.

I do also have the classic problem with words changing shape and objects disappearing. Once while driving I blew right through a stop sign; I didn't see it. My luck, I end up cutting off a cop. He asks me "Didn't you see that stop sign?" I answered, 'No, I did not see any stop sign.' The stop sign was about three times bigger than normal, a blind man could have seen it. But my brain said, "that's not a stop sign, it's just way too big. It doesn't belong there," and my brain erased it from my visual perception. I did not see any stop sign, to me it was completely invisible. One time at the San Jose Flea Market there was this giant banner floating in the sky, held up by massive balloons, quite impressive. To me it said, "Portable Cantaloupe Traps." Surely that wasn't right, so I blinked a couple of times and looked again. "Portable Cantaloupe Traps." I was with my parents, so I asked my mom to read that sign. "Portable Canopies & Tarps" Not nearly as fun as a cantaloupe trap, and you know, if you are going to buy a cantaloupe trap, it had better be portable. I wasn't interested in tarps or canopies though. My mom used to accuse me of just reading the first part of words an making the rest up, but that's not really it. The words change, sometimes right in font of me they will change. I read "tram," blink, and then the word says "trio." Kind of annoying when you are trying to find a ride out to the parking lot and end up at a concert instead.

So now I'm a dad and have the duty of reading to my son at bed time. I like to pre-read and memorize his books, that way I don't sound like a first grader giving a summer vacation report. I do a prety awsome redeition of "There Was an Old Lady Who Swalloed a Fly." Fortunately, my son is not all that into Dr. Seuss. That man must have hated dyslexics.