The Word Cloud

Dyslexia – aMAZEing Words.

At age seven I could barely read and couldn’t read at all. The words on a page held endless fascination for me but they remained a mystery. I couldn’t understand why everyone else had so little difficulty. I failed every spelling test and had become used to such teacher utterances as:

“Oh Orla! You really must put more effort in.”

“Orla-Jo, miss”

“Well I’ll get you’re name right when you hand me up an exercise that looks like it’s written in English”

But just before I turned eight my life was saved by a two Wizards and a Hobbit.

My brother also had trouble reading. He had hidden it well but at thirteen, people were starting to notice. My mother bought a copy of Harry Potter because she had heard it was good for boys Sean’s age. I went with her to the book shop and stared in confusion at all the kids my age reading pages filled with black symbols that seemed to move around the page like little ants.

The older of my two brothers was with us too. I followed him quietly to his favourite section, fantasy and science-fiction. Miserably I watched his face light up while flicking through the shiny paperbacks. On spotting me staring Eamon sighed and called me over. He picked a book at random and started to tell me the story.

“Dragons, Eamy, really?”

Eamon clipped the back of my head.

“Don’t call me Eamy, boy remember stupid.”

“Eamon don’t hit your sister!”

My mum had reappeared. She caught my longing glance at the shelf and spotted something good. A graphic novel version of ‘The Hobbit’ by JRR Tolkien, which was mainly pictures and speech bubbles with only some narrative writing which someone could read to me but I could follow the story without.

I gazed in wonder at the beautiful drawings of dwarves and wizards, trolls and goblins, hobbits and giants. Best of all I like the Elves in forests and the dragon Smog. I would go through it hundreds of times a day. Slowly working my way through the dialogue a speech bubble per reading. But the fantasy universe had captured my soul so completely that I could never have been satisfied at that.

Every night during this time my mother and Sean would sit on the sofa reading Harry Potter. She would read half a chapter, then Sean. I would sat and listen to the story, totally captivated.

Then one night in the lead up to Christmas I was sitting in the sitting room of my mother’s friend while they had a very boring conversation. It was then I noticed a copy of Harry Potter on the coffee table as it was on every coffee table at this time. Out of sheer boredom I picked it up.

“What the hell” I thought.

At first it was as it always was. The words ran their ant-like race in all directions, but soon my memory of the story helped me decipher their magical code. Two hours later when my mother realised how long she’d been talking for she nearly died of shook to find me pouring over a book with no pictures in sight.

From then I read every fantasy novel I could get my little eight year old hands on. All three Lord of the Rings, Alan Garner’s Weirdstone of Brisingermen, Moon of Gomrath and The Owl Service flew beneath my hands as my reading level; much to the shock to all my teachers began to surpass that of all my class mates. When at ten I sank my teeth into Sense and Sensibility but still couldn’t spell “orange” with writing “organge” my mother took me and my brother to get assessed for dyslexia.

I remember that grey waiting room well. My brother and I holding hands for the first time in five years as if our very lives were at stake; I remember his furtive whisper too.

“What if we’re not dyslexic? What if we’re just stupid?”

I was too nervous to answer so I just gulped.

To no ones surprise we were dyslexic and extremely dyslexic at that. Various patronising remedial classes later I found myself with a called Mrs Nixon and a free government laptop.

Every now and again I would have nightmares where I couldn’t read and write anymore and no one thought I was clever anymore. I would wake up in cold sweats but it was just a dream.

I learned how to touch type and learned the wonders of the Spell Check.

And so writing began…and whole new path to the fantasy dreams of my muddled youth.