Stuff 6 - Empty Cardboard Tube:



It seems that the older I get the more dyslexic & dyspraxic I realise I am.

Before you all navigate away in disgust, no I'm not going to turn this into a hand-wringing piece about how bad my childhood was. Well not much, because the truth is these days I have no regrets about it.

One of the reasons for this is that many years ago now my Brother gave me a piece of advice that has always stayed with me.

I was diagnosed as Dyslexic & Dyspraxic at the age of nearly 29 when I was studying at City College in Norwich. At the time this came as a huge relief, finally having a reason for why I struggled so much as a child.

With all I know now about living with both conditions looking back at my childhood it is blindingly obvious that these were the learning styles that I have. For many years I had a chip on my shoulder and an air of grievance about it. Particularly against the education system, because I performed so badly in childhood. But, as I have grown older I have become more comfortable in my own skin and it has lost its sting.

My Brother’s words ring true still all these years later “Ev, this is great news, just don’t let it turn you into a Badge Wearer”.

Good advice as it turns out. It would have been so easy to find out the reason why and to miss the most valuable lesson from it by clutching it too tightly.

How to move beyond it.

The truth is no-one has it easy in life, we all struggle at times & face things that trouble us or alter us. For many years I felt my school days had held me back. But, they haven’t really. Today’s object illustrates this quite well.

I graduated from City College Norwich with A BA (Hons) in Marketing in 2001. During the graduation ceremony I was handed this empty cardboard tube. The Diploma itself came in the post some weeks later.

It’s not the contents of the Cardboard Tube that were ever important, it was the journey that got me to that point & beyond that was important.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stuff 5 - A Few Good Nights:

Image
Ok so having been told off by my Mother for two Blogs in a row, I thought I should move to safer ground in subject terms. Today’s item is a Collage that is currently hanging in my Living Room. It's called "A Few Good Nights" It is literally the product of the time a few years ago, when my house for a while became the place where my friends would congregate. Mostly because a few of us had kids of a similar age & consequently had little time or money to go to somewhere as exotic as a pub very often. You never realise how rich you were, until you have kids. Being the crowd that we were, there was always something new someone had found for us all to try, it became a bit of a voyage of discovery at times. We got into the habit of sticking the labels of a beer we enjoyed, or even a whiskey that we thought was fowl, both worthy of a place because they were enjoyed or laughed about at the time. The wrapper of the Cuban Cigar I shared with Phil, along with the label of the bot
Read more

Adulting 4: The inherent problems of A La Carte History.

Image
Apparently, a good tale grows with the telling; this is especially true of me with my memories.  After all I do love a good story. One of my favourites is the tale I tell, when I explain to people how I met my oldest friend.  It is a good story and it contains the kind of elements that would illicit the response I tend to be looking for.   The first walk to the new school, the nervousness of being the new kid in class, the discomfort of new school clothes, meeting my new teacher, an argument with the annoying kid in class, who quickly became my best friend.    It is a nice whimsical story, but these days, if I am honest I have no idea if its true or not. This is because I was seven at the time & I have altered it many times since over the years.   I suspect Chris does not know either, but I know that his version of events will differ from mine.   It is well known that our memories are not particularly good.   The truth is, we all do this kind of thing with our memories quite a lot,
Read more

Places 5 - London:

Image
Our American friends would insist on saying London, England. And it's true 29 other Londons are available globally. Including London, Ontario in Canada, London, Arkansas in the United States there is even a London in Kiribati. But while it's actually true that other London's are available, really there is only one. I have had a long history with London. I was born, as many of my friends like to point out in Hemel Hempstead Hertfordshire, very close to London. So some of my earliest childhood memories are of travelling into London with my parents to go to places like the Natural History Museum the Science Museum, British Museum (the place my younger son calls the Museum of Stolen Stuff), The National Portrait Gallery, Borough Market and of course watching changing of the guards at Buck House. Very standard London visiting fair and also formative in many ways. As an adult I have visited London regularly mainly for business but I've also had a number of very memorable week
Read more