The Brain in Reverse

I have dyslexia.

Also, I have insomnia.

For those of you wondering, no, I don’t stay up all night wondering if there really is a Dog.

The word dyslexia itself comes from the Greek words δυσ- dys- (impaired) and λέξις lexis (word).

The lexicon describes dyslexia as an impairment with written language and numbers, particularly with reading and spelling. Current medical rationale suggests that dyslexia results from differences in how the brain processes written or spoken language. You usually see this in kids who can see the actual letters on a chalkboard, but they’re mentally re-arraigned in their heads to spell something different.

Ironically, after decades of study, doctors agree that although dyslexia is the result of a neurological difference, it is not an intellectual disability at all.

What it really means is that there are those outside the accepted realm of normalcy in human rationale who process information in a nonlinear thought pattern. We don’t understand the world in the typical line-of-sight thinking that your typical high school honor roll student does. We think in colors, we add and subtract with music, we can reconcile dancing and driving in the same rhythm and not miss a beat.

In other words, you don’t have to tell US to think outside the box…We fucking LIVE there. Probably, we invented that aphorism.

Dyslexia means that we don’t see things in an orderly “A-B-C” order of events, dyslexics tend to think in “Q-Z-B” and still arrive at the correct answer. This is a source of consternation to linear thinkers, because it’s something they can’t qualify or define. For us, the path on knowledge is different in every individual

Dyslexia occurs at all levels of intelligence, and there is evidence to suggest it falls into the “Brain is not Mind” argument. Those of us who understand it have learned how to control the chaos, to channel it into productive use.

I didn’t know I was dyslexic when I was a kid, and neither did anyone else. They just thought I was an idiot. I was put into special education classes, given private tutors, made to drill math flashcards over and over, night after hellish night.

My 5^th grade teacher, Mrs. Elliot, understood what I was and did something that, looking back on it, was nothing short of an act of genius.

She gave me a comic book and taught me the first page of words that went with the pictures until I could read it myself. We associated words with the characters saying them, and what they were talking about in the picture.

Then we did that with page two.

While everybody else read from the school texts, I was reading from Spider Man. By the end of that year, I was READING damn near anything I could get my hands on. I understood stories and would bury myself in this new world I had discovered.

This was also the year my mother died, and subsequently, I was shuffled off to one relative or another. I remember these years quite clearly, because I was now back among people who once again thought I was mentally deficient in some way, and had absolutely none of the tools needed to understand it. God, I remember test after test after psychological test, and not one of the “learned educators” even suspected that the problem was simply a matter of academic approach. Of course, back then there was no other teaching model than the accepted conventional standard, and anyone who wasn’t on the long bus got put on the short one. It still angers me to this day, thinking of all the time wasted trying to force “convention” down my throat. I honestly shouldn’t be so bitter towards my aunts and uncles, they’re simple country people in the backwoods of South Carolina, not academic and literary leaders of the community. But it still pisses me off to think about it nowadays.

So I had some saving grace in grammar school, except none of my other teachers did this, or even considered it as a factor. So I spent most of my grade and high school struggling to barely pass most of my other classes, academically screwed, until my Junior year of high school where I met Mr. Ruckman, my first real mathematics teacher.

William Ruckman should probably go down in the books as one of the pioneers of educational leadership. He not only recognized what my problem was, he educated me on how to solve it myself. He taught me not only that I could learn, but how to learn. He taught me that most good mathematicians were nothing more than well-versed human calculators, and what I needed was a way to see the math and mechanics of everyday life.

Mr. Ruckman was also the base for the teaching model that I use, trying various methods on a student until one of them sticks.

(I would love to give this story a rousing finish, but the truth is that the next year I ran away from the current orphanage I was staying at, and started living in a Martial Arts school. Only years later would I go to an adult education class and test for my G.E.D.)

My wife was another unexpected piece in the puzzle. Caren has a degree in physics, as do both of her parents. I could make a predictable joke about the stereotypical Chinese family and mathematics here…Anyway, she’s the person who introduced me to the works of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Feynman, and other “nonlinear” thinkers.

I probably am more aware of my mental learning paths and methods than the majority of the planet. I have observed that people, particularly in their adult lives, hit a zenith of educational intake and pretty much stall there. It might be contributed to a sense of “That’s all, I’ve learned enough” kind of thinking, I can see that. But personally speaking, I picked up an Okinawan Kama at age 15, and an Italian Violin at age 35 with the same sense of wonder and impatience to begin learning. I know what I have to do to be able to sit in a classroom and learn, as well as stand in a martial arts studio and retain what’s being taught. I know how to switch gears, depending on who is talking to me, and how much attention to give their words. I carry paper and pen with me EVERYWHERE. If I see or hear something I don’t understand? I write it down and research it until I DO get it.

I see the symptoms of dyslexia in lots of kids who I have taught and met in my life: Withdrawn into the world of literature, difficulty doing anything else. They paint weird things. They remember the words to every song on the radio, but can’t do their multiplication tables.

I wonder if they’ll ever meet someone who can teach them not to be afraid of it, that it’s a demon they can will to their bidding. What they are seeing in they’re head isn’t a black hole, it’s a universe filled with stars. What they have isn’t a “learning disability”, as the inappropriate label it’s given suggests.

It’s a way to see the world through the eyes of a God.