What it's like

There are various forms of dyslexia. In some, whole words or even individual letters get twisted around in the brain so that it's next to impossible to figure out what was written. Mine is a little different. I sometimes see whole words and sometimes parts of words and my brain can't tell the difference, it just fills in the blanks and I go merrily reading onward not knowing when it happens. Since language is very predictable, in reading it's usually not even a little problem. Context fills in most of the holes, my brain mostly guesses right and I don't notice a thing. It's very like the extreme speed reading that was touted back in the 1960s and 1970s, except I don't read that fast.

Writing is a bigger problem because my brain skips things (letters, syllables, even whole words), and occasionally puts in the wrong word (usually a stray word from my next thought, a homonym, or in editing doubling a word I know good and well is already there). People who've read my journal over time would probably notice that I keep editing long after I've posted because I keep finding things.

Anyway my reading is like a continuous game of Wheel of Fortune, where most of the letters are there and part of my brain is working so fast I don't even know it's filling the rest in. It's actually a huge help with foreign languages, because often information gets filled in for words I don't actually recognize.

But anyway, even when things go wrong, it's not all bad. I skim headlines which, of course, are usually not at all related and sometimes really comical things pop into my head. Yesterday in the grocery store, I glanced at a sign and immediately must have seen a word like this: TO_IC. Now guess the word! My brain guessed the word and then instantly scanned the words with it giving me the famous 'gin and toxic!' When that happens I just have to stop and laugh and no one else knows why my life is sometimes so very amusing.