Word mix up!

I am pretty sure that most people have seen or heard the joke “Dyslexics untie!”   

If not, it is a simple play on words making fun of people who have dyslexia.  Dyslexia is a condition that causes an affected person to see numbers and letters differently than how they are actually written.  Sometimes the letters appear to be switched around pr upside down, and sometimes entire words seem to have switched places.  This also goes for numbers.  That being said, the above joke should read “Dyslexics unite!”

Being a person with dyslexia, I do find this joke slightly amusing.  The first time I read it, it looked like it said “Dyslexics unite!” which I guess is the point of the joke.  At any rate, there are some people who are very self conscious about their dyslexia.  It is considered a learning disability and people can have it in varying degrees.  As with the OCD, I am on the lower end of the scale, thankfully.  

I had a lot of trouble with math as a student, not because I didn’t understand the concept, but because I literally saw the numbers wrong.  The way that things would switch around on the page made algebra especially frustrating. 

Aside from dyslexia being a burden, it can also be entertaining.  I have had many instances where I read a sign on a building, and it looked totally different to me than it did to everyone else.  When I read it, I would laugh out loud.  People would ask what was so funny and I was say that it was the sign.  Then, they would tell me what it actually said, and it was almost always less interesting than the way my mind saw it.
 

Some common mix ups that I encounter are the words life and life.  Get it?  It should say file and life… but that is how my mind sees it.   In fact, I actually meant to type “file and life” but my mind did it wrong.  Kinda funny.  Another mix up I often encounter is the STOP sign.  One time in high school, I was in the car with my friend and I giggled when I saw a STOP sign.  She asked what was funny and I said that my dyslexia saw something different when I read the STOP sign.  She said to me, “What does it say? ‘RACE’?”  I laughed so hard!  Unfortunately, all I really saw was “POTS”.

Thanks for "listening."