Now that I’m 45, I’m less embarrassed to say that I struggle with my spelling & grammar.
Aged 8 my teacher, known to me as the vinegar face old moose, shoved a grid of numbers in my hand, told me to stand on my little wooden chair and say my 8 times tables out loud.
I had never seen a times table before let or loan learnt one.
She then spent the next 5 minuets telling the class how stupid I was, and that if my hair wasn’t so thick I would be able take in more information.
As you can imagine this didn’t put me in good stead to read out loud ever again.
For the next 37 years I have struggled to spell or add up without using spell check or a calculator, to tell the truth even then it’s difficult. I have mastered avoiding this all my life and developed cunning ways to bounce at the moment I was next to read, to ensure ever standing on a chair again.
This is no joke for me. When you couple my struggles with being dual heritage, pretty fucking intellegent and super human, you get a resilient smart mouth who now has the power and ability to answer any questions I was asked in an attempt to embarrass me in my childhood.
I have come to the conclusion that my own armchair diagnosis is dyslexia…. And it has made me wonder, could there be such a thing as emotional dyslexia? Trauma dyslexia? Let’s ask some experts and see what they think.