Sharon is a member and the poet of our support group and loves to write. The One Legged Stool is about her experience of school days as an undiagnosed dyslexic. She also wrote the Dyslexia Grid.
.
Oh, how I hated that one legged stool.
It was used as a punishment in class for children that couldn't remember their alphabet or times tables, I was one of them children.
The stool only had one leg. It would always wobble when sitting on it.
I had to face the wall with my forehead pressing against the cold magnolia paint.
For an hour, I would sit there wiggling and wobbling trying to get comfortable.
I was told to sit still, looking down at my crumpled text book on my lap and the dreaded alphabet. I couldn't decipher any of it.
It made no difference to me which way I held the book, none of it made sense to me,
Lines, dots and squiggles. I could have easily made pretty pictures out of the symbols on the paper.
If only that had been acceptable, I could have done better.
The Teacher would point to the black board.
“Sharon!” she would say, inches away from my nose. I could smell the odor of her coffee she had drank at break time.
“What letter is this?” I didn't know, I would take a random guess hoping I would be right.
“No, no, no!” My blood ran cold as I heard her screech at me “how can you look at the alphabet all lesson and not remember what you have been looking at?’’
My back twitched. My forehead and bottom were numb, trying desperately not to wobble off the stool. The children snigering behind me.
“Can anyone tell Sharon what letter this is?” she bellowed, pointing to the black board.
“It's an ‘s’ miss” yelled little Johnny from the back of the class.
Only clever children sat at the back of the class. They had no problem reading or seeing the black board.
“Yes it is. Clever boy Johnny. It's the letter at the beginning of Sharon's name.”
To me it looked like a snake and not a very good one at that, it was missing its tongue.
I said “no, it's a snake.” What I meant to say was it looked like a snake, well at least in my mind it did.
I got half of the question right, 'snake’ begins with the letter ‘s’. Doesn't it?
Was I thinking in picture format? Something I still do to this day.
I was told that until I could spell my name, I would never get anywhere in life.
I don't remember how I finally got the hang of spelling my own name.
At a later date, when I got married, my husband very kindly agreed to take on my father's name. Now I have a double barrel name.
Oh, if only my old teacher knew!
Share this post: