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Dyslexia has been a part of my life, which I have had to learn to live with as I struggled through the school years. In Primary school, it was little understood at the time and only gradually did any ideas for dealing with it filter through, but by and large I was in the generation where you were written off if you couldn’t manage the three “R’s”!!
The best thing about school for me was getting home in the afternoon, where I had my own projects to occupy myself with and they were of much greater importance in my mind than the dull slog of school work, which inevitably ended up in humiliation and failure with the Friday tests.
Later in Secondary School things improved as I connected with other subjects which sparked interest, but anything requiring an essay was inevitably riddled with spelling mistakes and poor grammar unless I had access to a dictionary. The marking of some subjects such as Geography and History didn’t penalize you for spelling mistakes which was an improvement on what had been there before, but my English marks continued to be abysmal.
The curious thing is that I ended up in further education, but looking back I think that if job prospects had been better in the late 70’s I would have ended up in a trade. I continued further education not with any great urge to be academic, but rather as a means of staying off the dole queue.
My mother got me interested in reading as a seven-year-old and unlike many dyslexics, I enjoyed it and read vivaciously. Unfortunately, the spelling didn’t improve much but I did become better at writing stories. I remember our class in third form being given a homework requiring us to compose a poem, then being told off by my English teacher for plagiarizing verses by a famous poet. I knew I had made the poem up myself and so was actually quite pleased that my effort was as good as some poets, though I had no idea who.
I wrote this poem when I was angry, for my wife had just had a go at me for some silly spelling mistake which she couldn’t believe I hadn’t done on purpose. I guess it brought back bad memories so I just sat down and churned out this poem quickly and pretty much as you see it today. She read it and it must have done the trick for she has been much more sympathetic since.
Unsurprisingly I am linking this poem with the British Dyslexia Association so please make a donation to help them with their efforts to bring about greater understanding of the condition and to help support those who live with it.
Dyslexia
I can't spell you know, I never could.
Experts call it Dyslexia, they would.
A word I couldn't spell, typically funny,
Just another reason to be branded dummy.
No sweeties for me after spelling tests,
Just a teacher's lecture and other kids’ jests.
Lots of lines or even a ruler on knuckles,
Will power needed or else one buckles.
He's as thick as champ, or a bit slow,
Lots of talk but they didn't know.
Just put him to the back of the class,
Absolutely no chance of an 11 plus pass.
Childhood years steal away; gone forever,
It isn't funny in school being non-clever.
The best years of your life they say,
I just couldn't wait for to get away.
Special classes with experts to teach,
And they tried their best to outreach.
But I didn't understand why I was there,
Words didn't become any less of a blur.
Break up your words they all say,
Spell it in little bits is the way.
But to me the word is just a big lump,
Memorize the whole lot in just one jump.
Some flaw in memory is part of the cause.
Fifty times you might repeat without pause.
You think you are doing just fine,
Then spell it differently on the next line.
It's a life's embarrassment, this spelling curse,
But it's only a deficiency, it could be worse.
Some people are born to a life of pain,
Others have other scrambled bits of brain.
So next time your having a laugh,
At the dummy’s idiotic spelling gaff.
Remember, your other talents may be but few,
And this dyslexic writes better poetry than you!
Jim Brown - December 1999