Dyslexia on the Silver Screen

I can not say how long I've waited to see people like me be seen. Recognized. How long I've wished that there was someone like me, that wasn't fixed. No fixing, not magical cure to everything.

And finally it happened.

Meet Vanellope von Schweets from the movie 'Wreak it Ralph'.  

The idea behind the movie is that the video games in the arcade are alive, and when we're gone they go on and do their game things. Like go to the bar, or Bad Guys Anonymous, or have parties. Ralph is a bad guy who wants to be more and becomes convinced that the only way he can do so is through a getting a metal like the hero's and good guys do. Through a series of events he runs in to Vanellope who steals his metal to enter a race, promising to win it back for him. For the rest just watch the movie, it's really cute.

Vanellope is the first ever disney character that I remember that has dyslexia. Especially the first I can ever remember being picked on for it. She lives in the game 'Sugar Rush' and the whole point of it is racing, and Vanellope is not allowed to mingle at all. She is literally ran into hiding. There are posters of her face that ban her from entering anything especially races. The other racers actually corner her and destroy her car that she made. All because she is accused of being a glitch. (To which she replies she just has pixlexia, there for just a worthy to race.)

It was just this absolutely unreal experience to finally see someone like me on the screen.

Replace the game with a school, and the races with state curriculum and I'd like to introduce myself, "Hi I'm Vanellope von Schweets, good ta meet ya."

There is probably a post out there somewhere about the dyslexic joke being offensive but I related to Vanellope so much that I don't think it was a joke. I think she truly is pixlexic. She can feel it in her code that she was meant to be a racer, because she glitches however she is banned from the tracks and exiled to an unfinished bonus level to live alone. Once given the chance she excels and actually uses her glitch to give her an edge over the other racers.

I always had a thing for stories, even before I could write and it became apparent that I would not meet a few standards of writing. I am an author. Dyslexic and Dysgraphic, I am an author. The school was content to put me in special ed and then not let me take any honers classes even if the teacher, myself and my parents said I could handle it. When I finally got in to honers and then went straight Ap I was belittled in peer review groups because well, "are you smart enough if you can't even spell?" Am I smart enough to hold an officer position? Am I smart at all?

Like Vanellope even when the day is saved, I still glitch. Nothing will change who I am, and nothing will change the wiring I have for written language. But that is why I love her so much is she still glitches even when everything is fixed. Even when she can now race, she glitches. There wasn't some magical cure, because nothing was wrong with her, and she's once of the best racers because of it. My parents and the rest of my siblings didn't understand and might not ever fully understand why I was so happy about it, but there was a dyslexic hero. One who stayed dyslexic and became proud of it; used it to make her the best racer in the game. One who proved that there's nothing wrong with a little glitching.

She's a pixlexic racer, I'm a dyslexic author. In a way she's done what I hoped to do with published books. Let others out there struggling with the harassment and the off hand comments and self doubt know that they are not limited by what is 'coded' for them. They are more than their glitch, and their glitch is not a limit but a whole new way to 'race' that others will never get. It's not always easy, but in the end it's always worth it.

Unfiltered

Dyslixia and disgraphia. I have five disorders, three of which are mental, but for the next few pages I’m going to just talk about those two. I’ve been dignosed with Progressive Dyslixia, so I write every thing backwards but can read and retain faster than the agrave person and love to dig in to a good Charles Dickens or Tolkin noval. I also have Disgraphia, and not with math, but I spell things they way they sound, feneticly if you will. In the gratest of all ironys, around the same time I was tested and dignosed I started my life’s ambition to become an author.

That’s right, a published, hopefully best selling, Young Adult author.

What may be the problem you ask? If I want it I should go for it, and let nothing stand in my way! Well to be frank, the English langwige sucks. Its words are spelled sometimes the exact opposite of what they sound like. Many times it will look right to me, sound right when I sound it out, but as soon as a teacher or class mate sees it they’ll look at me and ask, “Now, what where you trying to say?”

Every one else sees the way words come out of me as wrong. I don’t conform to ither their or their twisted langwige’s bizzar and aquward rules. What no one else seems to understand is this is how I think. This is how words look and fell right to me and in my head. Sure I my adjust my spelling for the convinance of others, but that dosn’t change me or how I think. That doesn't stop other from trying to change me, my mind and insist I can do everything thier way.

In the thierd or fouth grade, in order to save me from impending school structured doom and my teachers a deal on advil from reading my ‘creative interptratations’ of words I was put as a floter in Spechal Education classes. This worked out pretty good for the most part. I could step out of class and drop in if something didn't quite make sence to me and get some extra time and attenchen that normaly couldn’t be spared in a room of around twenty little devals. That was as long as I didn’t get stuck with Miss. Browning. Many times if I would ask Miss. Browning how to spell a word she would give me a dictionary and tell me to look it up. Even if I came back thirty miunets later and said I couldn’t find it, she would shake her head and tell me it was in there somewhere and to stop being so lazy and go find it. Eventualy I just started peeking in the door and if she was the only teacher avalbul I would walk around the school and back to class and just stay confused rather than be confused and embaressed.

In high school, in class peer reviewed assigments were things to be dreaded, simply because people are shallow. Many times I would write at the bottem of the paper or something simaler telling them why there was so many incorrect spellings. It never really mattered. Out of a nine point grading scale I would always get a two or three, however for the typed up rewrite I would change very few things in the way of word order and sentence flow and simply spell cheak it. My grade would then go up to eghits and nines.

In anomous critic here at Hollins I was asked if English was my first langwige, or if I was one of the transfer students in a note from workshop when my betta reader was too busy to look over my submission. In a room where people were reading anonmis works, where they author may or may not be in the room, and giving verbal feed back for a note taker a Hollins woman asked why bother with seending any edit notes becuse of the intelagance leval of the author. She had nothing to go on other than what was in front of her, and very clearly expressed that she douted the “smartness” of the person because they hadn’t grasped speling and gramer, and well what intelagent person doesn't get that?

It happens everywhere.

It is a both frustrating and interesting way to go through life. I now know more ways to use a thusoraus as a spell cheaker than I do a dictionary. The actwal spell cheak on my computer and I are old rivals at what letters should go where in what words. Around close friends a drimatic reading of any unspelled cheaked work leads to a good laugh. Crying over the fate of lost tomatos and lost tomarows are two very different things, especially when the victims head is up next on the chopping block.

I’ve learned over the years to have editors lined up and that I need to start papers days in advance of the due date, at least more so than usawal. The world still insists that I can master their english and be just as good at the rest of them if I really really try. They still don’t get it. This is how I see the world, this is how I see words and how they look right to me. Their clunky spelling with forced letters to sit in spots they don't look welcomed in on the page reads and feels wrong. This is my mind and it refuses to change for any langwaige, no matter how strange.