Dyslexic observation
Many things happened which fade away over time. I could mostly recall from years when I was in class 2nd. When I started to observe and retain them in memory. I think its with most of people maybe with 1–2 years difference.
As a kid I used to relate things think in more abstract way than today. Things were grouped by similarity in looks, movement, sound, shape or do similar things. And it used to be always engaging my mind. I used to swap things as they looked similar. Call it a manufacturing defect possibly Dyslexia or my composition. And it still persists today after years.
Though it made me struggle in initial years on life, but I think its more of a blessing since I can easily relate things and make things abstract than other crowd. I can easily find patterns, group problems, apply one solution to other different problem. I can easily imagine things, systems and their interactions. Can easily think way out of complex problems by imagination. While preparing for 12 class engineering entrances I was easily able to mock and run rotation problems in my mind, and could solve them without picking up pen and paper. It has its own thrill. Everything I read, write and listen, or I am speaking I am fully visualising it simultaneously. If you make a joke I actually run a small movie on it in mind to understand it. It happens very quickly.
Like I used to see my arm and bulldozer arms similar both liftings things both having fingers. Wall clocks were similar to vehicle wheels. Bulbs were similar to sun. The ticking sound of clock was similar to dripping tap water, to and fro movement of doors, all had an interval of of sound. I was able to see the flickering of light bulbs/tube-lights/tv screen though I am used to it now. That periodic sound of wind in ears. All sweet things tasted similar and spicy tasted similar and so on.
This affected majorly in my reading, writing and now coding. I used to read next words before than the current word. I sometimes reads word in opposite direction. Many words look similar today also like: [b,d], [j, t], [M,N], [x,y], [f,t], [α(a), 9], [E,F], [W,M], [P,R], [U,V], [u,v], [i,j], [p,q], [e,a], [l,1], [J,L], [z,s],[x,×],[2,²] and many others. It happens with words, I can remember: [excise,exercise], [Convenience,Conveyance], [Calls,Class]etc.
With punctuation it wis different. Full stop(.) was like a wall, I can’t read next. Comma(,) used to separate two different sentences, and i forget the first one when reading second. Semicolon(;) was like j(small J) so I was never able to interpret it until 2 years back when I learnt about it out of curiosity while programming.
I used to write like this: “haj nam, hwo era yon? yov knom fhis is e santence.” I can easily read this today also. I can also easily read a sentence in mirror.
While typing I used to get fight in timing of key press. Observing the pattern I found some repetitive issues:
- I could type with keyboard keys in fully reversed direction from right to left instead of left to right, since they have same mapping in my mind. like: [K,S], [E,I], [W,O].
- Keys which are places together are also swapped in mind in ordering. Like: [S,A], [X,C] issues with copy paste, [M,N], [T,Y], [,.], [O,P], [J,L], [w,s].
- Ordering of words, Sometimes entire sentence also.
- when letters are repeating, the repetition in applied to , different letter. like: [different> difeerent, diferrent], [Calls> Calss]
- Issues with pronunciation: I sometimes swap pronunciation of letters while speaking or its ordering.
Issues with timing: With fast brain my hands, mouth used to skip letters and words while writing and speaking. Blended it with Dyslexia I wrote wrote/spoke words in bad ordering and write words with letters swapped inside it. Though I am still improving on it. But I have figured out the problem statement. which is itself more tough.
I see car like another animal, front like a face: headlights like eyes, nose to breathe out air and indicators as ears, bonnet as mouth, and you can predict for silencers. Literally try to imagine like a dog, its much similar. I think the car inventor would have taken inspiration like this one. I see TV remotes like old mobile phones which had keypad.
Dyslexia exposes you to similarity & duality of things. You first see 2 different things similar and 2 similar things differently. You can easily see the other side of things and its meaning. Or like another possibility/meaning for same thing.
Like when someone speaks some sentence my brain runs multiple threads in parallel about the possible meanings and filters down to 2 possible meanings with hard choice. So I have to always ask which one before picking up one meaning. Sometimes I can pickup one automatically by context, but it happens rarely.
This post has majorly been about the struggles Dyslexia caused in initial part of life. It will still be forcing me to struggle over time. But it will decrease since you get habitual to problems.
Despite all the problems, Dyslexia has forced on me a thinking process different & better than others. Dyslexia has blessing apart from defects which I will share in my next post “Dyslexic Thinking”.
And lastly, only God knows how much errors I have corrected while writing this post. :(
//TODO: I may add more content in this same post over time ;P
