Over a decade ago - a young man wrote this for me to publish in the ABC for Reading newsletter. I thought you might find it useful for Irlen. I was unable to help this young man with overlays but knew he needed lenses. He was predicted the highest grades at school but had started to get detentions for not completing his homework. He is now very successful in his chosen career and it was a privilege to work with him. I thought you might find it useful for Irlen.Awareness Week:- A Fire Station door is red An obvious statement. Or is it? What is “Normal”? “Normal” depends on your perspective. For some, a normal day is taking the kids to school, going to work, coming home, cooking something to eat then watching a bit of TV then bed, with about an hour’s reading. But there are many people for whom normal is coping with something strenuous, like a disabled or elderly member of the family, but to them it is still perfectly normal, whereas the rest of us would regard their way of life as extremely abnormal. For me, my life has been coping with constant pain, that I didn’t even know it was there. I know, I know. You’re thinking, well if he didn’t know it was there, surely having the pain taken away wouldn’t make a difference. But you don’t know that air exists, do you? Yes, we all know it IS there, but you can’t see it. Can you? But if someone were to take air away, it would make a vast difference. You’d be dead. OK, now imagine living your whole life seeing things differently, only you take that as being normal. How do you know that everyone doesn’t see that way? When you are told for your entire life that a fire station door or a post box, or telephone box is red, you see it as red, even When in reality, if you took a photograph as you see it and show is to someone else they would say it was pink. No, that’s not it. Once again the English language proves inadequate to say what you want to. OK, I think that I’ve got it. To me, the fire station door was always pink, sort of wishy-washy red, but if you asked me what colour it was, I would have said it was red and thought you stupid for asking. Why? Because I knew that fire station doors are red, but because I had not seen anything different, red was pinky to me. Now, to the other areas of the problem, for as you will soon understand, colours being different is only one of the many facets of this gem of a problem. OK, where to start. Ah, the page. To me, the very page you are now reading the words that I have so carefully scribed down for you appeared different. No, not appeared, WAS different. The letters first. When I began to read a page, the white background would gradually get greyer and greyer, and around each letter had a little outline of white, like a halo. And if I blinked, or moved my focus, these little halos would stay in the same place as they were before, only now, they weren’t lining up with the letters and got in the way. If I managed to keep my eyes still for more than about five minutes, then the halos would spread out until the whole page was so bright and blinking with pink, purple, blue, red, and orange lightning bolts that I was forced to stop. And, you must understand, I had no idea that this wasn’t normal. Didn’t everyone see this way? But that’s not all. Each letter would stay in the same position, but some letters would be at a different height to others, as though they had lifted off the page. And every time I blinked, the letters would change position, some sinking, some rising, so I would have to read the sentence I had just read again. So what? Well, think of how many times you blink in the average minute. It’s a lot, isn’t it? So, this would end up with me reading paragraphs again and again, until I grew so tired of the exercise that I would fall asleep or if I was at school, end up with a headache that would not stop until I had finished reading, and even then it would carry on for a few hours. So how did I cope? Well either I took frequent breaks, or I would only read parts of sentences, for instance, if a sentence read “It would be nice to go for a walk on the beach” I would only read “would nice go walk beach” and mentally guess at the rest, which leads to problems as I missed things. If it was important or complex, I had to concentrate very hard to stop myself from lapsing into drowsiness or missing bits off sentences. In addition, the gaps between words in a page of type would form rivers down the page, and if I read too long they would flow down the page, blurring the type until the page would become so blurred that I could not read. So, without knowing it, I had been concentrating so hard trying to get all the classwork done, so that by the time I got home, I was so tired of work that I had to stop. And so the routine fell into a pattern. School, then try to do as little work at home as I could. I ended up in the first couple of full weeks of the term, not doing any homework at all and subconsciously noting those teachers that were less likely to freak out or get me into trouble, then I would do their homework at lunchtimes, which meant no free time, but increased my drowsiness at the end of the day, so I couldn’t do anything more. We have still only explained and investigated a few of the many sides to the overall picture. For instance, everything where there was a high contrast, for instance the printed page, or telegraph wires against any sky, be it blue, grey or almost black, there would be rainbows. I am not making this up. On either side of the wire there would be rainbows, red, yellow and orange on the top and on the left of the posts, and blue, purple and indigo on the bottom and right. Those among you with good memories will realise that there was no green in the rainbows. There wasn’t. Don’t ask me why, because I haven’t the faintest idea. Again, wherever the rainbows were, everything began to have a halo, even to the point where, if you will excuse the irony of the situation, that the RE teacher had a halo when he wrote on the white board. I mention him specifically because all the other teachers but the history teacher had blackboards, which I could see without any of the adverse effects. What you must understand is that all this was perfectly normal. When I was in Primary School, I was prescribed glasses. I didn’t notice the rainbows before then, but when I did notice them, in Middle School, I thought that it was just part of the glasses, seeing as I thought perhaps the glasses were refracting the light, I didn’t know, so I didn’t give it a second thought. The only occasion I had given to wonder was when we did art, and I was constantly told to “Paint what you see”, but was always being scolded for wasting red and blue paint. Time passes, and I went into Upper School, where my tactics with schoolwork began to become flawed, and there was simply too much work to cope with, and so my life became a total balancing act, with me trying to keep the endless detentions for homework from my parents, and trying to get it all done in the lunch hour. Then, on the rare occasions when they closed the library, I was stuck. There would be a whole week’s worth of homework not done properly, because to try and get it all done I had to rush it more than I could get by with and I would get into trouble. Then, for the first time ever, I dreaded the day when parents evening came. For the first year, I didn’t get as bad reports as I had feared, and there was a lot of sympathy because I had pneumonia at the time, so the teachers didn’t come down as hard on me as perhaps they would have done otherwise. The next year was much worse. I was in a lot of trouble, but all my grades were good. This puzzled a lot of people, as the work I was doing could not be good enough to get those kind of grades, even with thorough revision. The trick and one advantage of the difficulty was that anything I had read, I knew, and could remember, because I had to read it over and over and over again. This earned me the name “Encyclopaedia” from my History teacher at Middle School. However I tried, I couldn’t do what the teachers had asked for at the parents evening. I enjoyed doing things in my spare time such as modelling, (Which I only did at weekends as then was the only time I had the patience for it), and music. I eventually ended up taking organ lessons, at which I did fairly well, up to a point. I ended up recognising the chords by shape, the pattern of the notes not by where the notes were, which led to problems as some of the chords are very similar shapes when written on the manuscript. Despite all the problems I still enjoyed reading, having a mother who is a keen reader and a good selection of reading books. However, I hated “Read aloud” sessions at school, as I was always afraid that I would stumble and embarrass myself; as I was not really that popular, having all my time taken up with homework at lunchtimes. I detested sport and any ball games really, (except badminton because the shuttle went slow enough to allow me time to get in the right place to hit it) because I could not catch, bounce or even throw a ball well. Why this was I never knew and didn’t really care, as I didn’t like the PE teacher and was told by my parents that not everyone can be good at sport; some are good at other things. Since I have had my lenses, I now know that I used to see the whole world half flat, like one of those pictures you can get where they take one picture lots of times, cut out the raised bits and stick it on the original on little blocks. Do you notice that I keep on using the past tense? That is because, thankfully the problem has been eased. Note, please that I said EASED, not cured. It all started with my organ teacher. She knew of another boy my age who also took organ lessons and suggested that we take them together hoping that we would “Bounce off each other” and improve both our standards. So Paul and I went along to the lessons together, and both our mothers began to chat. After about six months, after the terrible parents evening, mum was talking to Paul’s about what the teachers had said. Then Paul’s mum said that she thought that I had got the same condition as Paul. Knowing nothing of this, one day when I was off sick, at lunchtime I was enjoying a ham roll and mum walks in from the lounge and puts a piece of paper in front of me. “Matt, could you fill this in for me” she says. I saw that it was a tickboxes paper so I said that I would, but what was the exam for? Mum just walked off. I filled the form out, and took it to mum. As soon as she saw the paper she tuned off the TV (Which was showing her favourite programme, which I thought was odd) and began to look through it. She didn’t say anything but she walked away quietly. At the weekend she took me to Paul’s house and told me that Paul’s mum was going to ask some questions. “Is this something to do with that book she gave you?” to which mum nodded. (The book, “Reading by the Colours” was about the condition I have got, I learned later) When we got there, there were a lot of questions, and few activities to do such as an isometric cube where I had to count the squares printed along one row of the side and along the top, and eventually Paul’s mum took out some coloured see-through pieces of plastic, A4 size. I thought that she was doing the next play’s lighting or something, but then she asked me to read through it. After about fifty different combinations of red, blue, yellow and orange ‘overlays’ there wasn’t one that helped. So we went to the Irlen Centre. The Irlen centre was a small place, with only two or three rooms. We went in and the lady who took me into another room with my parents took out a folder with my name on it. Just as I was beginning to wonder whether this was MIS or the CIA, I saw my form, filled in with scruffy ticks. She then asked a lot of questions, watching me all the time, and I felt that I was under so much pressure that I kept turning to my parents but they couldn’t help. After about an hour the lady took out a whole briefcase fill of different coloured lenses, and the next two hours were then spent trying different lenses on to see which one “made the letters behave themselves”. After that, when we had got the first colour that helped best, we went on to the next layer, all the time, just when you thought it was over there would be another lense to try. After about two or three more layers the lady got a cup of tea for us all and we sat there for about ten minutes before we got started all over again with another layer. I later learned that the tea is all part of the process to let the eye get used to the colour. When I was really comfortable, and there were six layers blue tacked onto my glasses we stopped, left my glasses there and I went home in my spare pair. The new ones would come in Three weeks. Three Weeks! Those three weeks were undoubtedly the worst of my life. For, you see, the constant pain that I had lived with for so long had been relieved for a few minutes, and thus I was now aware of it, day upon day. I finally realised how bad it was. Without my glasses now, it is like I am trapped within a cage of my own brain, condemned to suffer all day and all night. Then they came. The miraculous lenses had been put in and I was allowed to wear them. I came home from school and mum said “They came today. Put these on” and we then drove home. Those few moments were the best in my life. “Wow. The fire station door is red!” and “isn’t that car really blue?”. My beloved brother, ever cynical said “Of course the door is red!”. But it was never red like that. That red was bright, bold and I couldn’t take your eyes away from it. Then came school. The inevitable idiots who can’t resist a good joke, making stupid, inane comments. But I didn’t care. I was free, my mind had finally got wings that I didn’t even know I needed. And after six months of wearing the lenses, when my lenses now have twelve layers of colour, of which six are grey? Now the comments Hurt. People do not understand. They never will, because a picture is worth a thousand words at best, and I cannot find words adequate to describe what the glasses mean to me. I m different. So? You may not see my eyes and see my expressions properly. But everyone is different. Do you spite the one who likes basketball instead of football? Do you comment rudely about those who have a different way of talking? There are always differences, and if people cannot accept those differences then I have no time for those people I find that as my own frustrations are diminished, then I have more tolerance for these intolerant people. I find that in the twilight hours my glasses are less effective and WI try to read during this time, I get very agitated (I also find it hard to see well in half light and the other night, when told to put something in the car wandered straight past the car for about 200 metres). I find that now I have my glasses my schoolbag gets heavier as I cannot remember everything I have read anymore and so I end up taking all my old exercise books in because if there is a question where I have to use a process that is in my old book, I cannot remember how to do it and so I end up taking all my old books so I can refer back.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 08:06:27 +0000
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