I had to skim through this chapter; the first of three on dyslexia. There, I said it. I will go back to it though, because it, like all of chapters in Ms. Wolf's book "Proust and the Squid" it is fascinating. And I do have this book until December. Its just, its Saturday night. I'm tired, my two boys are tired, my wife is tired and class is over as of tomorrow at noon. Despite my tiredness, my friend from Chicago is coming over because he's visiting his parents in town and I don't get to see him too often...funny thing is, he has dyslexia (or a reading disorder, because dyslexia is a catch-all term that covers a broad spectrum of symptoms).
I don't remember much about his having dyslexia except that after school he had to go to tutoring to help him read better. I do remember that he had a tougher time than me and my other friends did with his studies...I assume it was because of his dyslexia. So often he would sit in his desk and ask questions and try his butt off to understand the concepts we would be going over in class. Funny thing is, we were good kids who got good grades, well, really, we were nerds. You know the dorky, glasses wearing, no girlfriend having, video games on a Friday night kinds of nerds. My friend was as much as I was; only he had to work so much harder to do it. He studied all the time. He woke up early, he stayed up late. Long after the rest of us were finished and had moved on to more fun things, he was still there, plugging away. Working. Hard. He wasn't any less smart, I know he is much smarter than I am; it's just his brain does not process reading very well.
Ms. Wolf says that is typical. Most people with dyslexia are incredibly smart and she goes to great lengths to name incredible minds who had dsylexia (Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein -- to name two among CEOes and Entrepeneurs). But unfortunately because those who do have dyslexia have a terrible time learning to read and more importantly comprehending what they read, they often feel failure and rejection.
Unless they find the other things that they are good at (apparently dyslexics are great with spacial reasoning). My buddy found acting, it's his lifelong passion and is pretty damned good at it too, but he had to work at it. What blows my mind about it is, he can read, comprehend and deliver his lines with power and emotion and understanding no problem. He even says he can read subtitles in a foreign movie no problem, even though if he probably read the same lines in a book, he would have difficulty.
We don't know much about dyslexia, but we know more than we used to. On pg.187 of Ms. Wolfs book she has drawings that illustrate the differences between a normal and a dyslexic reading brain. The illustrations are amazing. From the moment one starts reading at zero milliseconds to 500 milliseconds at semantic processing (word comprehension) nearly every single step of the way the normal human brain literally looks different from the dsylexic brain. Meaning what areas of the brain that show the most activity during the reading process in a dsylexic brain are not the same as in yours and mine. They actually rely much more heavily on the right side of the brain for everything that they do. They also tend to be more creative. No wonder my friend is in acting.
At the end of the chapter, Ms. Wolf tells of her teenage dsylexic son drawing at the kitchen table. He's just completed a detailed drawing of the leaning tower of Pisa. "...upside down. When I asked him why, he said it was easier for him to do it that way." pg. 196.
And now ideas worth spreading (Willard Wigan; extreme miniature sculptor and childhood dyslexic)
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