Trip to the Corner of Fiction and Dyslexia

It’s been awhile since I’ve written about books. I’m not reading as much as used to. I’m still keeping up with our book club here at the continuum care campus but that only requires that I polish off one book a month. Some of our recent reads have been: Everyone Brave is Forgiven, The Vanishing Half, Everything I’ve Never Told You and The All--Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion. That last book was written by Fannie Flagg ten years ago and I read and liked it when it first came out. This week I listened to it and liked it even more. Fannie read the book for the audio version using both a southern and a Polish accent. I usually prefer audio books read by professionals but it didn’t take a deep dive on the internet to learn that Fannie IS an accomplished actress, comedian and author. She’s had parts in Grease, (playing the nurse), Fried Green Tomatoes (playing the teacher), Five Easy Pieces (playing Stoney) as well as she was on a long list of TV shows including two seasons on The Dick VanDyke Show. She was also a recurring panelist on an impressive list of popular game shows in the ‘70s and ‘80s. She was even nominated for two Academy Awards. 

Although she wanted to, Fannie didn’t write during ‘70s but a note from a teacher in the audience of a game show, who noticed a pattern of misspelling in her answers, changed Ms Flagg’s life by telling her she’s dyslexia. “I was, am, severely dyslexic and couldn't spell, still can't spell," she said in an interview. "So I was discouraged from writing and embarrassed." This side-note on the author blew me away. I can’t tell you how many close friends and family have expressed shock when I’ve asked for help spelling a word. It’s deeply embarrassing to have to ask in the first place, then have them respond with something like, “How can you write if you can’t spell?” I tell them the mechanics of spelling isn't the same things as picking out the words you want to write. It's an inadequate explanation for a deeply misunderstood learning disability but it’s all I’ve got.

Now days kids with dyslexia are identified early on and they are given tools to help keep them from falling behind. But they still struggle and like many famous people who has come forth to share their stories about growing up with this learning disability kids today still fear reading out loud and getting bullied. Robin Williams joked he was the only kid in his neighborhood who once went Trick or 'trouting'. Cher, Henry Winkler, Richard Branson, Anderson Cooper, Albert Einstein and Pablo Piasso have all written about their struggles with reading and spelling. Clearly, dyslexia has nothing to do with intelligence but I dare say those of us who have it have all been called 'stupid' or 'retard' while growing up.

Back to the book: The All--Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion is a lighter read than my book club usually picks and while we haven’t had our discussion yet, I’m getting the impression from a few snippets of conversions around the campus that others are not getting into the storyline like I did. I’m not surprised by that. The others have more sophisticated tastes in books and read more widely. I’ve been open about the fact that I’m dyslexic and that I came to love reading later in life than most people. Still, I like to think I hold my own with the discussions when I’m not having one of my tongue-tied days. All bets are off when that happens.

Okay, I should probably get down to what I liked about this book and that’s easy to answer. I love Ms Flagg’s research on the WASP (the Women’s Air Force Service Patrol). She was able to make this little known period of women’s history come alive. One of my ancestors, Amelia Earhart, was in the WASP so I was already aware of the more than 1,000 female pilots who racked up over 60 million miles of operational flights. When I think about them flying brand new planes from the factories to the air force bases and doing things like towing aerial targets for the guys in training to shoot at and transporting cargo in every type of military aircraft produced during WWII it makes me mad that it took decades and a signature from Jimmy Carter for these women to finally get included into the military history books. I read in one article the reason the air force didn’t want it known that women were able to flying the same planes as the men were flying is because they needed the combat pilots during WWII to feel like heroes. That may have been true during the '40s but it shouldn't have taken the Good Old Boys Club so long to finally give the WASP their due credit. Can you imagine the nerves of steel it took to pull a target behind a plane while fighter pilots in training tried to nail the target you were pulling?

I may not remember the story lines of most of the books I read but I do remember favorite passages that I collect from the books that speak to me. And From The All-Girls Filling Station Last Reunion the quote I saved came after the leading character's mother died and Sookie had time to reflect. This is what she told herself: “Thanks to Dr. Shapiro, she has learned that being a successful person is not necessarily defined by what you have achieved, but by what you have overcome. And she had overcome something that, for her, was huge. She had overcome her fear of displeasing her mother….” 

Finding this new lens to judge my own life by, made the trip to the corner of Fiction and Dyslexia worth while. ©

Binge Watching Netflix's Queer Eye and the UMC

I’ve never liked using the word ‘queer’ and I was surprised as anyone when I found myself binge watching Queer Eye on Saturday night. In case you don’t know or have forgotten about this Reality TV franchise it’s now in its seventh season and it features some gay guys who call themselves the Fab Five. In each show they give lifestyle and fashion makeovers to a guest. It could be a makeover for straight guys, straight women or gay guys coming out. I've seen a sampling of all of these.

I actually started watching it not so much as a choice but because I couldn’t find my remote that got lost in my bedding. I’d just finished watching the end of Next in Fashion and because the main fashion designer in that show, Tan, is also in Queer Eye Netflix's took me into an episode of Queer Eye and by the time I located the remote I was curious enough to keep watching. I already knew Tan as a sweet guy who is emphatic with the contestants on Next in Fashion. But what really hooked me to keep watching QE was a co-host named Karamo who seemed to be be able to give good, solid lifestyle advice to the guests. After a quick Google search I learned he was a licensed social worker and psychotherapist for ten years before going into the media work. Rounding out the Fab Five is a hairstylist named Jonathan, a food and wine expert, and an interior designer who does home makeovers while the rest of the guys work on the guest. 

Jonathan is my least favorite personality on the show and he's also the most flamboyant who loves being the center of attention. He's an over-the-top type who often wears dresses and ‘swishes it up’ for the camera. But we do occasionally see glimpses of depth in his personally when he’s one-on-one with the guests. However, I can't get used to seeing a beard and dress on the same person. I’ve known quite a few gay guys in my lifetime (between the floral industry and art classes) and only one them was what I'd call gay-dramatic like Jonathan. 

In the Continuum Care Complex where I live there are at four gay women (two couples) and I heard a rumor there are a couple of guys but if I've met them they are too deep in the closet for me to have guessed. The women neither flaunt it nor hide it and are generally treated well by everyone except one of the guys recently called one of the couples “butch ladies” to their faces. They laughed it off but I was shocked and blurted out, “That was mean-spirited!”  

I guess what I'm walking around the barn to say is it just never occurred to me to be prejudice against this entire segment of society. People who want to shove gays back in the closet because---I'm guessing---the flamboyant ones make them too uncomfortable and they don’t seem to acknowledge or care that gays are nothing new. Indigenous people around the world all have centuries old language for gender variations in their communities. Two-Spirits in North American Tribes have never been considered to be male or female. 

I know from the talk around here that the United Methodist Church is splitting up over the issue of acceptance or non-acceptance of LGBTQ community. According to a recent article in Christianity Today 1,800 churches in the U.S. have taken advantage of the exit plan the church came up with a few years ago to split. Closer to home one of my fellow residents is involved in writing a handbook for his church on the subject. I wanted to ask him why he cares so much and how does the Church square its position with the biological reasons why we have gay people born? Does it ignore the fact that homosexuality appears in the animal kingdom? Though I don’t really need to ask to guess the push-back comes from the passages and parables in his Bible, a Bible that have been edited, added to and subtracted from by various mortal men over many centuries. To me it makes more sense to believe that if God made a certain percentage of all humans and animals on earth gay then He meant for them to be here and for that reason alone we shouldn’t turn our backs on them. 

And if He didn’t mean for them to be here and it’s proven in the future that gayness is without a doubt a kind of birth defect caused by a hormonal differentiation between the organs and the brain that could be treated and corrected in utero how will the Church feel about its history of shunning people who were born gay before this science is available? Will the Church be among the first to try to push for laws to punish parents who might choose, for whatever reason, not to treat their babies in utero? Would they say if a fetus is too far along for the treatment that that is an acceptable reason to have an abortion? An understanding of gender selection in the brain that differs from a babies' sex organs will be commonly accepting in scientific and medical communities in the not too distance future, but it will bring with it a whole new set of moral choices to the gay debate.

We live in a country with Great Divides with neither side listening to the other. We have some states making "don't say gay" laws and a few parents wanting to keep their babies 'gender fluid' until they are old enough to pick. While waiting for the science to become widely accepted, wouldn't it be nice if we could find a way to rein in the extremes to find a common ground in the middle. Compromise and tolerance needs to come back in vogue. If only there was a makeover show to make that happen. ©

 

 

Accomplished Women and Dementia Support

People ask me if I paint much---my easel sets in the window---and I tell them not at all since I moved here which is mostly true. I've dabbled a few times but not enough to earn the "artist at work" sign the easel suggests. At dinner one night a table mate took a deeper diving, asking me why not. And I replied, I don’t have the time which I realized wasn't entirely true. From 7:00 to 10:00 PM I don't do much except lately fall asleep in my La-Z-Boy. “I never liked painting after dark," I explained "and there is too much to do here during the day.” I could try to switch my morning routine of writing on the computer with painting and try writing at night, but what I’d end up doing is skipping the social things on my schedule. With the computer I can just walk away but with painting I’d be saying to myself, I’ve already got the mess out I might as well keep going. In my old life I'd been known to start doing arty-farty stuff in the morning and let the entire day get away from me.

Yesterday---Wednesday---was a pretty typical day. I got up at 8:00, drank coffee and worked on the computer until 10:30 ish. Then I got a shower and dressed while listening to the news. I was at the lunch table by noon and at 1:30 there was a tea here for International Women’s Day. We had been asked by the Life Enrichment Director to write a little bio of ourselves and she made a slide show of our photos and bios. I say, “our” but I didn’t submit my bio because I knew it would only showcase how out of my league I am with my fellow residents. And I wouldn’t have been wrong. We have a lot of very accomplished women here. 

By the way the L.E. Director paired the music from Meredith Grey's Superhero Power Pose scene from Grey's Anatomy with the video and that tickled the heck out of me. Whenever I'm on the elevator alone, which happens 2 to 4 times a day, I strike the superhero power pose against the elevator wall to stretch out my back and I hum that music. Haven't been caught doing this yet, but someday I will and I'll have some 'plaining' to do.

After the tea was our weekly Mahjong game which if I couldn’t walk over to the main building to play it, I’d crawl. We have a lot of laughs during our games and it’s a great mental challenge. I didn’t win either of the games we played but I was proud of myself for trying to build a hand I’ve never tried before that contains all winds and dragons. I was two tiles away from Mahjonging when I discarded a tile that gave someone else the win. I forgot to play defensively. Oops. 

We finished playing at 5:30 and by 6:00 I was taking part in a dementia support group and didn’t get dinner until 7:30 when I stuck a TV entree in the microwave. After a full day like there is no way I’m going to get my brushes out and play in the paints. By 10:00 I usually start getting ready for bed and selecting a movie to watch on Netflixs.

The dementia support meeting was interesting and had me tearing up during a documentary they showed. A tall, good-looking young guy sitting next to me was crying too so I know I wasn’t just being a melodramatic marshmallow. The documentary featured a woman with Lewy Body Dementia who lives at our sister campus. It was just completed after eight months of filming and it will be in distribution soon. The woman was there and it was after the film was over when she was trying to describe what the hallucinations felt like that got us two bawl babies dabbing our eyes. My brother has hallucinations, too, and I presume the young guy next to me has a relative effected as well. He was the only person in the room who didn't say anything during the discussion.

The women featured in the documentary said she thinks it’s important to tell family, friends and neighbors about your dementia as early as possible and early on she developed a habit of answering, “good day” or “bad day” when ever someone asks how she is doing, which in turn gives her family a gauge on how to handle her on any given day and it gives her permission not to have to try to explain what is going on inside her head because some days she just doesn’t have the words or the will to do that beyond saying good or bad day. Dementia is a tough row to hoe no matter what part you play in the scenario.

When my brother's wife was dealing with Early Onset Alzheimer's she didn't want anyone to know and looking back I can see how hard and harmful that was on him. He had no one to give him support or help, no one to talk to about what was going on. After a few years of them turning down our invitations to go out to dinner, or to stop by for a visit, etc., we thought we'd done something to make them mad but it turned out it was just getting harder and harder for them to cover up her Alzheimer's. It was such a shock after the truth came out to see she couldn't even do things like button up her own coat yet it was a relief at the same time because I got my brother back. Secrets as important as that kind of diagnosis causes strain between people.

Change of topic: I don’t know what is the matter with me lately. I'm having trouble coming up with blog fodder at the rate I need it. More precisely coming up with light topics to write about. My last post about hair turned out to be lighter than I thought it was, based on the comments. I thought it would spark a deeper conversation about race. I was worried for nothing and that worry almost caused me not to publish it.

Looking  back though my archives I realize I used to write more topic-based or funny essays and a less "this is what I did today" dear diary-like posts. I'd like to get back to my roots but I don't think that will happen until I get another, topic out of my head. It's like a bee buzzing around annoying me. If you're guessing it will be about an old woman trying to make peace with the fact that she isn't immortal, you'd be right. That post might not come next week but its in my mental queue. ©

The Superhero Power Pose scene