Faulty Wiring

This isn’t another blog about my husband trying his hand at home repairs. No, after a couple of heart-jolting near misses, he now hires an electrician.

Of course, one of those heart-stopping near misses included the time he fried my hot tub’s motor and shot himself half way across the backyard. But like I said, this isn’t about that kind of wiring, I’m talking brain wiring.

And my own faulty connections. However, I am gonna mess with my husband. (Hey, he deserves it. It’s his fault that I’m sitting here at two in the morning with a strange man snoring in my ear, his bald head now resting on my shoulder, and one of his hands tucked inside the front of his pants, all the while my husband is sleeping on the other side of me as I write this blog.)

Okay, back to my wiring. I’m dyslexic. Seriously. Dyslexia basically means faulty wiring in the brain. And mine is faulty. My husband says that this explains a lot. I let him say it, too. However, I occasionally get even by blogging about him. Paybacks are hell, especially now as I see the bald guy has begun to drool as well as snore!

The severity of dyslexia and the symptoms of this condition vary from person to person, and usually depend on how badly the wiring is screwed up. I know a lot of people whose wiring is trickier than mine. I’m an avid reader, but I didn’t learn to read until the third grade. Even today, pronouncing some words can be a challenge. And there’s the issue with the written word.

The evidence of my condition is apparent in my writing mishaps. You’ve probably seen a few symptoms in my blogs--missing words, typos, and wrong word choices. Yup, I know the difference between two and too, you’re and your, but my right side of the brain can’t see the difference. And to jump start my left side of the brain takes a lot of juice. Probably as much as my husband felt when he fried my hot tub and shot across the yard.

Unfortunately, butchering words isn’t the only dyslexic symptom. You’ve heard of directionally impaired, right? Well, I’m directionally broken. The whole left/right stuff doesn’t make sense to me. Honest, I pick up a pen and start writing with my left hand, see it’s a little messy and realize that I’m using the wrong hand. Oh, addressing an envelope always gives me pause. Which side does the stamp go on?

When in school, I dreaded doing the pledge of allegiance because I could never figure out where my heart was or which hand to place over it.

My directional impairment doesn’t stop with left and right, it involves the whole north, east, south and west thing.

Seriously, who came up with this concept? I mean, okay, when the sun rises, (like I’ve been up a lot at that time) I know that it’s the east. And thanks to my son for teaching me the whole “never eat slimy worms” trick, I can use the big fire ball in the sky to figure out what direction is what. Why? Because, unlike the heart, you can see it! And when the big fire ball in the sky sets, I can tell you where west is. But how the hell do you know on a cloudy day or at night? Or midday when you don’t know which direction the sun traveled to get where it is. It’s not as if it leaves little arrows pointing its way.

All this directional left/right impairment makes getting around hard. Like when I’m driving and first pull out on the street. It takes me a while to know which side of the road I’m supposed to be driving on. I did find a trick for that one. If a car is coming straight at me, I usually know I’m on the wrong side. However, I’m in bad shape if I meet another dyslexic while driving.

Getting around, I use a lot of landmarks. Like a pink mailbox or a vasectomy billboard. (God help me if someone decides to paint their mail box or if men stop having vasectomies.)

Another thing this condition makes difficult is filling out forms. When I look at a page with a lot of information, I go on overload. The worse is trying to fill out forms on the computer.

But I have found some great compensation methods. I mean, I married my husband for a reason, right? And he does a good job.

Most of the time.

Yup, paybacks are hell.

You see, as I write this I’m on my way back from California. I’ve been there doing workshops for Orange County RWA and San Diego RWA. (Waving to all my new Ca. friends.) Mid-trip, Hubby flew to Los Angles to drive me to San Diego. (He’d heard vasectomies and pink mail boxes were on the decline out west, and California wasn’t forgiving to dyslexic women driving on the wrong side of the Interstate 405.) And because I hate doing forms and such on the computer, he also went online to make our flight reservations.

Gotta’ love him, right?

Yeah, I do.

And I even praised him. I praised him right up until Saturday night when my writing partner called me in San Diego to inform me that I’d gotten an email from my airline confirming our flight. Luckily, she’d noticed that yes, we were scheduled for a 12:50 departure as I had told her, however, it wasn’t p.m., but a.m.. I guess, I’m not the only one with dyslexic tendencies.

We slung everything into our suitcases, checked out of the $200 hotel that we’d been in for less than an hour, and drove like maniacs out of San Diego to get to LAX.

As we were being seated in the sold-out airplane, at one in the morning, my husband asked, “Do you think everyone in here is as big of an idiot as I am and just booked the wrong flight?”

I just smiled. Some things husbands should be allowed to figure out themselves.

“You aren’t too mad at me, are you?” he asked.

I smiled again. He gets a suspicious look in his eye. “You aren’t going to blog about this, are you?”

“Would I do that?” I ask.

Convinced, Hubby leans back and goes to sleep. As the bald guy starts snoring, I start working on my blog. Hey, I didn't say I wasn't going to blog about it. Like I said, some things husbands need to figure out themselves.

So, anyone else directionally impaired? Can anyone explain why men always think they get the arm rest on planes? Why is it that some men can’t sleep if one hand isn’t in their pants? Can anyone tell me how I can politely tell Mr. Bald Guy to stop drooling on me?

Crime Scene Christie