I would like to start today’s post by wishing a great big congratulations to Teacher Sis. She is graduating with her Master Degree in Education today. Be sure to send her some good doogies today and maybe she won’t trip going a across the stage.

I’ve started researching something recently and my results so far are pretty good. I’ve been trying to figure out why it is so hard for me to read. My whole life I’ve had difficulty reading. When I expressed this as a child, they brought in someone to help me read at school. After a few days of me reading aloud to them, they determined that there was nothing wrong with me. They just wrote it off as me seeking attention. But still I complained of not being able to read, so they tested my eyes at school. My vision was fine. A little nearsighted, but fine. Nothing that would prevent me from reading words on a page. And still, for years I didn’t read. I blamed it on the fact that my parents aren’t big readers, so reading wasn’t encouraged when I was little. I blamed it on rebelling against my teachers for “making” me read for school. I even considered that I was mildly dyslexic.

Dismissed at every turn. But seeing as how I’ve got all the time in the world to think about stuff these days, I’ve reopened the long since closed case of my reading disability and my findings are pretty, forgive the pun, eye opening. I am almost 100% certain that I have what are called tracking issues. Tracking is something that most people come by naturally and take for granted. You know how your eyes move to follow the line of text in a book? Well, mine don’t want to do that. My eyes like to jump all over. Here’s a good example of what my eyes do when I’m reading:

Granted, mine is not that severe any more, but you get the idea. Once my eyes start jumping, it is only a matter of time before my attention jumps off onto a new path and then I’m thinking about something else and not reading at all.

My tracking issues stem from a problem with my eyes being able to process information fast enough. For example, I can see something right in front of me, but stuff happening in my peripheral vision takes a second to process. Just long enough for my center vision to look at it. I have a kind of tunnel vision. Finding this out actually explains a lot of things about my life. It explains why I have a hard time seeing at night. Because I have to take in lots of little lights flashing and moving all around me all at the same time. It also explains why I get headaches from television. Because it strains my eyes having to try to track so many things at once. Over the years my brain has compensated to the best of its abilities, but it is still difficult to read books and magazines.

Want to find out if you have tracking issues? There’s a simple test. Just focus on the clown’s face. Don’t look away from his face, but while you’re doing that follow the red and blue lines with your peripheral vision. If you can do this, you don’t have tracking issues. If you find that you start following the red and blue lines and not looking at the clown like I do, then you probably have tracking issues. Oh, I guess I should show you the clown. Right:

You are now open to my hypnotic suggestions. (Buy me this geodesic dome.) I’m currently working on resolving a lifetime of self-adjusted reprogramming in order to make my eyes work properly. I’ll let you know how that turns out.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for you today. The only thing I’m doing today is eating lunch on assignment. The rest of the day will be spent wishing it was warm enough to go lie in my hammock. More soon. ~SC