The Undiscovered Country by Andre Bagoo

Author:Andre Bagoo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Peepal Tree Press

THE SECRET LIFE OF A DYSLEXIC CRITIC

One day you see the banners. And the posters. And the table with volunteers. It’s Dyslexia Week. You pick up a flier listing the symptoms.

√Difficulty reading, including reading aloud

√Slow and labour-intensive reading and writing

√Problems spelling

√Avoiding activities that involve reading

√Mispronouncing names or words, or problems retrieving words

√Trouble understanding jokes or expressions that have a meaning not easily understood from the specific words (idioms), such as “piece of cake” meaning “easy”

√Spending an unusually long time completing tasks that involve reading or writing

√Difficulty summarizing a story

√Trouble learning a foreign language

√Difficulty memorizing

√Difficulty doing math problems

They say if you have some of these symptoms you should get screened. You have all of them. You have one of those moments when suddenly everything comes rushing towards you, like a scene in one of those movies where the main character realises who the murderer really is, or finds the cure to the illness, or figures out how to defeat the super-villain – you know the “ah ha!” moment – and you have to get screened NOW, RIGHT AWAY, FORTHWITH, so you go up to one of the volunteers and demand the address of the nearest doctor who can do this sorcery. (What was written on the volunteer’s T-shirt? Don’t remember, but the colour was purple.) You call and make the appointment. You find the place online, do some internet searches about the doctor and turn up for the appointment.

The testing takes longer and is weirder than you expected. The doctor asks you question after question, makes you do exercise after exercise. It feels like being poked and prodded and you get frustrated because sometimes you can do what he asks, but sometimes you can’t remember where the red cube was on the poster he just held up; don’t know where the bunch of grapes was either, and you really have no idea where the eagle has flown off to. You feel helpless. You realise you’re doing badly. But some of the things are easy. In the end, he writes up a report.

There is good news and bad news. The good news is you’re not completely useless as a human being, you just have an issue. The bad news is that issue. For someone with your capabilities, you’re rather crap at memorising things (Man, this essay is taking forever to write, water break, have your after dinner snack, eat the banana bread; it has chia seeds and chocolate chips – it’s still kinda healthy, right?) but now, at least, you know the nature of the problem. You can explain the gap between what you say in tutorials and what you write in examinations; you can identify the factors that make things worse – and the factors that make things better. You can manage the situation (Manage, such a good word) so yes. So all is not lost because you know that while it’s harder for things to get into the bottle, once they are in, they stay in. You have to work harder at things, but it just means you value words more.

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