13: Your Turn
1. Playing chess is like driving in a city, and the chess pieces are like cars confusing me by going every which way in different directions.
2. It’s all chickadees and titmouse out there, but I can’t believe a word they say. I should be excited for spring but don’t feel like we really had a winter. My daffodils and tulip sprouts were up in January!
3. THIS is the best list of symptoms that people like me with dyscalculia have, and it’s so specific that it even says: Limited strategic planning ability for games like chess.
4. Dyscalculia is described as a math dyslexia, and it’s true that in school algebra and word math problems related to time and distances made me feel like I was going to have a seizure, but dyscalculia is so much more than that. It’s a neurological disorder that affects sense of direction (up, down, left, right), impairs the ability to picture geographical location and mechanical processes, to balance checkbooks, read music, clocks and maps, count back money/change, remember a sequence of instruction, put names with faces and more.
5. But maybe I’m in good company. Albert Einstein in his own words: “School came as a bore to me. It took up far too much time… I felt a downright fear of the mathematics class. The teacher pretended that algebra was a natural affair, to be taken for granted, whereas I didn’t even know what numbers really were. They were not flowers, not animals, not fossils; they were nothing that could be imagined, mere quantities that resulted from counting. To my confusion these quantities were now represented by letters, which signified sounds, so that it became impossible to hear them, so to speak.” – From Einstein’s book Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
6. Poetic revenge: The last two on the dyscalculia list are: Good poetic ability, visual memory for printed word. Good in creative arts.
7. I sit in silence / hands poised on keys / with no set routine to guide me / waiting for the click of imagination / to move through fingertips / With focused attention / the words take positions / because when gurus are muses / writers compose – Read The Writer’s Yoga Pose in its entirety HERE.
8. I call this the weekend dance floor.
9. I love a picture where I don’t know what is happening but prefer poems where I have a some idea what’s happening.
10. I can play a decent Scrabble game but whenever I play Scrabble with someone new, I explain why I count on my fingers to keep score.
11. How can I get one of THESE without spending $300?
12. Could the poetry of matter be shadow, like the moon is a muse to the sun’s glare?
13. A dyscalculia poem not written by me: I can’t write Haikus / I have dyscalculia / But I hope this worked – Ravyn LaRue
__________Thirteen Thursday
February 27th, 2020 11:19 am
oh I love those book nooks, Colleen: I guess you either have to get a paying job to get one, or make your own.
and the dyscalculia sounds like me, up to a point. I also have a low level asperger’s, which means I count EVERYTHING, and that helps overcome the trouble remembering numbers.
But I agree, the minute I hit algebra and geometry in highschool I was utterly lost. It just seemed so silly to say a+b=c, when you could just SAY, 12 + 9= 21…and of course (and luckily) I married a math guy, so he does the fancy calculations.
And the last two on the list are mine, too. (someone has been studying us, havent they)
February 27th, 2020 11:31 am
I think if I wanted it badly enough, I’d make my own book adventure book holder thingy. They are pretty cool, though.
February 27th, 2020 5:29 pm
You are in good company with Albert Einstein! I see how a neurological issue such as you describe makes the game extra challenging. To me chess is less about numbers and more about memory and planning in an ever-changing landscape. In some ways, it also reminds me of creating a poem. There is some counting that goes on. However, rather than grammatical structures to formulate, pieces with different roles to play are arranged and rearranged over and over again. It’s never boring!
February 27th, 2020 6:34 pm
That’s the problem, so much more than numbers, but the memory, planning moves ahead in an ever changing landscape. Give me Scrabble any day.
February 27th, 2020 11:39 pm
Wow, much of this describes me. Now it makes sense why I couldn’t do word problems in high school or understand anything in a college math theory class. I took an F in that math course rather than drop out and take it over. Decades later I still shudder thinking about that class. Nice to know that the big positives about having this condition is being creative.
February 27th, 2020 11:41 pm
That’s a relief to know about Einstein. Math was torture; a monster to me in school.
I grew up with a scrabble pro (mom) and a chess aficionado (dad). They ganged up on me to learn to play the piano.
How many syllables is dyscalculia? I counted six on the second line of LaRue’s haiku.
February 27th, 2020 11:45 pm
Only five syllables so I think she got it! 5/7/5.
February 28th, 2020 10:28 am
Colleen! As a chess enthusiast, hopefully I didn’t made it appeal even LESS. Sorry about that!
February 28th, 2020 4:40 pm
such great fun
March 2nd, 2020 6:11 pm
I share with you almost all of the pointers of dyscalculia,*except* the poetic ability. Crap! I can be neither a CPA nor a poet.