Every time our fourth-grade teacher told us to open our
books for the day’s history lesson, I braced myself. She would ask each
student, one by one, up and down each row, to read a paragraph aloud. Every time
Wanda (not her real name) was asked to read. Sister Ursula had to help her sound
out each word. Whatever spark of interest had been kindled in me by history that
day would be snuffed out by Wanda’s painstaking struggle with words.
Those of us who didn’t need the teacher’s help figured Wanda
was not as smart as we were. We generally ignored her. When I once overheard one
of my buddies tell her she was a dummy who smelled bad, I didn’t have the
courage to speak up in her defense.
The only reason Wanda did not get bullied more openly and
often is that we were in a Catholic school. We knew bad behavior would be met
with the usual punishment: knuckles rapped by a nun, swinging a wooden ruler,
followed by a one-hour sentence of kneeling in the hall on the hard linoleum
floor to give us time to think about what we had done.
Fast forward 30 years to the day I met Karen. We were cast together
in a community theater production of Angel Street, the stage version of
the 1944 film, Gaslight. As I got to know her, I learned she could have
been Wanda. Not the one I knew, but someone else who could not read before the
age of 10. She was called a smelly dummy by Brucie, Michael, Jerry and John, her
public school’s apostles of bullying.
In Karen’s case the name-calling grew to include forcing her
to dodge pebbles thrown at her. At recess she sought protection from her
tormentors by hiding behind a building. The playground was just another battleground
for her.
Karen was lucky to have a mother who encouraged her, helping
her with her spelling after school each day. But she also found comfort from
her fantasy friend, Bette Davis.
From the earliest she could remember, Karen wanted to be a
movie star. She often retreated to her bedroom to act out scenes from her best
friend’s movies, waving an imaginary cigarette in grand gestures, the way her
idol would do.
By the time Karen reached high school her difficulty in
reading had been overcome by her talent on stage. Her success in leading roles
in college led to a call back audition with Otto Preminger. But, even at that time,
the damage she took to her self-esteem as a grade schooler robbed her of the
self-confidence required for that all-important audition with the legendary
director.
Preminger sat on a high stool, in a darkened room, peering down
at the timid, aspiring actor before him. He asked Karen, “What have you done?” Forgetting
the accolades showered on her previous leading roles, she could find only the
words, “Oh… nothing.” Never again would she come as close to achieving her dream
of movie stardom.
Karen told me, despite her experience in professional and
community theater over the years, she has never been able to overcome a feeling
of not being good enough, stemming from her lifelong struggle with reading.
When her daughter encountered the same problem in school, Karen
sent her to a learning disability specialist, who diagnosed the problem as
dyslexia, a word Karen had never heard.
She learned dyslexia has nothing to do with intelligence,
but only with the inability to automatically match the letters you see on a page
with the sounds those letters and combinations of letters make.
It turns out Wanda and Karen were not dummies, after all.
Here’s what researchers at the Yale
University Center for Dyslexia & Creativity have discovered about dyslexia:
--Dyslexia is an unexpected difficulty in reading for an
individual who has the intelligence to be a much better reader.
--While people with dyslexia are slow readers, they often
are very fast and creative thinkers.
--Dyslexia cannot be cured, but with accommodations, it need
not keep a person from excelling in whatever occupation they choose.
--Dyslexics do not see and write words and letters
backwards. That’s an ongoing myth that can’t seem to die.
--One in five of the U.S. population has dyslexia. With
about 140 residents in this senior living community, I’m guessing Karen’s not
alone.
Here are some warning signs of dyslexia that show up in
elementary school.
--Slow and awkward reading
--Trouble reading unfamiliar words, making wild guesses because
they can’t sound out the word
--Avoidance of reading out loud
But here are some strengths of dyslexics as they reach
adulthood.
--Excellent writing skills if the focus is on content, not
spelling
--Exceptional empathy and warmth
--Success in areas not dependent on rote memory
--The ability to come up with original insights
--Inclination to think outside of the box and see the big
picture
--Noticeably resilient and able to adapt
Karen chooses not to join Book-of-the-Month clubs because of
the burden of her slow reading and the time she must set aside for writing her
own books. But when her 2015 San Diego Book Awards Winner, Helga: Growing up
in Hitler’s Germany, was chosen for discussion by our Château’s book club,
she found the time to attend.
Although Otto Preminger dashed Karen’s dream of movie
stardom, I can’t hold it against him. Had she been an Academy Awards winner,
it’s unlikely this small-town boy would ever have met her.
