I am certainly glad we got that "Dingus controversy" straightened up.  It is one of the baffling things about Dyslexia.  I must have looked at that graphic a hundred times before I published it.  I would still not notice the mistake if it wasn't pointed it out to me. My mind just sees what it wants to see in spite of empirical evidence to the contrary.  It is really embarrassing when the mistake is plastered bigger than life on a graphic.  Unfortunately it is not the first time I have done that and more unfortunately not the last.  

Most of the time I can hide my dyslexia. Most people don't know that I have a disability. I mean I don't walk with a cane or have a patch over my eye. I don't speak with an impediment. I can carry on a decent intelligent conversation.  A dyslexic doesn't look different from anyone else. Most of the time I am able to catch my mistakes before they are plastered for all to see, and since everyone makes typos or misspells words a lot of the time it goes unnoticed anyway. Then there are Digus mistakes.  When those things happen my insecurity jumps to center stage and to cope with my embarrassment I start my dyslexic confessions.  Perhaps this is one now.

I think the reason so may dyslexic people are artistic is because of the nature of the disability itself.  It takes may forms but basically it is a dysfunction of the "coding" process.  All written language is just a code.  We all agree that these little symbols on a page mean something. The letters are codes of a sounds.  When we link these sounds together they form a word which is another symbolic code for an idea or object.  Our minds can usually make the symbolic connection even when all the letters aren't (there is a case in point) all there.  

For a dyslexic a word isn't a set of sounds representative of an idea, it is a picture.  It is a graphic, a picture that means something.   If someone were to misspell the name McDonalds on the fast food sign, but keep the logo font and color the same, I don't think I would notice the mistake.  It is not a word it is just a picture to me. It represents McDonalds. Like most of us would not notice the Mona Lisa with a small wart on her chin unless we were studying very closely.  So words become pictures of ideas for me.  I skip right pass the step where you we sound out the letters in the word picture makes.  

In school, the solution to my reading problems and spelling problems was always the same.  I would come upon a word that I did not know.  A teacher would say, "Sound out the word, Jay".  Sound it out? I don't hear it in my head, how is that going to help me. I will just hear a cacophony of sounds and never relate it to a word or much less an idea. Besides, Anglo Saxons have decided to use silent letters, and alternate pronunciations in the English language as a rule rather than an occasional exception.  Just tell me the word, Teacher, so I can associate it with what it represents in my mind.

So it is much easier for a dyslexic to draw or paint because a painting is a symbol that doesn't need the proper sound.  A picture just has to covey an idea with no predetermined, acceptable arrangement of letter sounds.  We dyslexics are closer to the creative process because we go directly from symbol to idea rather than having to translate it into sounds or other common denominators. We also excel in anything that is not required to be written.  We are good speakers, great mechanics, excellent athletes, painters, musicians, and great writers when we have someone else check the spelling. Of course no matter how hard we try to compete in this non written world, the rest of the world is locked into proper spelling. Once in a while this word symbol mind game gets in the way. For me it has always meant big mistakes in public places.

In high school I was president of the radio club.  One of the duties of the Radio club was to broadcast daily announcements over the school PA system.  It was an announcers job.  The other clubs or the principal wrote copy for us to read regarding things that the entire school needed to know.  By the time I was a senior I was the voice of RHS in the afternoon. 

I rehearsed and reread every announcement before hand just to make sure I knew all the words. Then there was the day that an important announcement for the National Honor Society was handed to me just as I went "on the air".  It was the last day for the NHS to get a count of its members.  I was trying to tell them to come to the office and sign a list.  However, what I read was,

"Will all current members of the National Honor Society please come to room #214 after class and sign the ROOSTER."  Roster and rooster are very similar pictures, but very different ideas.  But it was too late, the entire school of 2000 erupted in one large guffaw which quickly rumbled down the halls.  For weeks there after supportive friends would make rooster noises at me in the hall.  

As you were,

Jay