By Charles E. Kraus
Over time, many of life’s embarrassing incidents get converted into charming stories about the past. We laugh at our younger, naïve selves, how ridiculous we were back when.
But not every misstep or poor result turns to nostalgia. Some of yesterday bleeds into tomorrow.
I have a learning disorder. Several of them. For the moment, I’m thinking about my inability to spell most words. I can do other things with words. Define them. Organize them. I’ve been published regularly for well over 50 years. Thank you, dictionaries, word lists, spelling machines, spellcheck, dear friends, and my wife -- Linda. How do you spell......? She’s been answering that question for as long as I’ve been getting into print.
During what people would call my formative years, no one identified poor spelling as a learning disorder. It was just poor spelling. Either I wasn’t applying myself or I simply lacked intelligence.
I do not see words in my mind’s eye, can’t sound them out. If a word is part of my knowledge base, I can spell it. If not, I’m at a total loss. No particular phonetic combinations identify words that I can accurately reproduce, as opposed to those that baffle. I spell the same word half a dozen different ways in a single paragraph.
As a kid, I stood in front of the class during the weekly spelling bee to again and again display my stupidity. At a teacher’s insistence, I’d copy the ‘correctly’ spelled version ten times, twenty times. Could have been a thousand, for all the good it didn’t do. Five minutes after filling a page, I’d be back to guessing the required string of letters. Repetition, logic, rules -- none of that stuff succeeds.
As life moved along -- new classrooms, new jobs, new neighbors, social situations, civic clubs, joining or participating in professional associations -- I always considered my potential exposure. Was there a chance my inability to spell would be put on display?
So many situations put me on guard. Sitting in an office filling out a job application, a medical history, writing down the procedure for starting the generator while the tenant looks over my shoulder. Or just me trying to make an entry in the journal I’d been given as a present. Dare I commit samples of my improbable guesswork to paper? To recorded history?
“Can’t spell” events have reverberations. The anticipated dread -- am I going to be asked or somehow be required to commit words to paper or a screen? Words that anybody else, my grandchildren, could easily handle? Is there a chance that someone might peek at my notes? Is my handicap about to become a focal point? Yet again?
The prospect of revealing my shortcomings is terrifying. I’m an adult. A lot of assumptions go with that designation. You are supposed to be able to spell.
There is an instance when my spelling abilities are about to be observed -- right before the pen hits the paper, a pause in the process fills my entire being with fear. With a cacophony of voices, the sum total of all the encouragement ever offered by parents and teachers -- you can do it, sound it out, don’t think about it, just write it down, picture it in your mind, you can do it, you can do it -- combined with echoes of the shock others have expressed, some pretty darn loudly, while taking in what I’d actually put on paper. The split second before I’m forced to spell a doubtful word, I experience anger, resentment, a longing to be normal, a ridiculous hope, perhaps a plea that this time, I’ll come up with the preferred spelling.
At some point the powers decided to call my problem a learning disorder, known as aphantasia, which is an inability to create mental images. Unique spelling was just flaw in the equipment. Like being born with a hearing deficit or poor eyesight, I had a condition.
But ultimately, no matter what you call it or how you explain it, the words come out looking like random squiggles, placeholders for established symbolic reality. And I come out looking like. . . .an exception to the rule(s).
Charles E. Kraus is an author who has written four books, including You’ll Never Work Again in Teaneck, N.J.
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