Dystrivia

A recurring theme of ours is that people with dyslexia think differently. We talk about it in terms of dyslexic superpowers, strengths that people with dyslexia tend to have that they are able to use to build success. Our series on famous dyslexics outlines how some of those strengths lead to that success. 

It's fun sometimes to observe some of those thinking patterns. All you have to do is play a game like quizzo, a trivia game, with my son Paul to get a glimpse of some of these differences. I don't pretend to be a neuroscientist but watching him play quizzo shows me that his mind works differently than the average bear.

First of all, he remembers some of the most obscure things. One night we were playing part of a trivia game that involved listening to songs and identifying the artists. Paul has an uncanny ability to remember artists and I’m not talking about well-known artists like The Beatles or The Rolling Stones but artists like Nazareth and The Buggles. I'm talking about artists who had one hit wonders many years ago. Many have learned the hard way not to challenge him when he identifies a song artist. 

His ear for sound extends to voices. If you watch cartoons with Paul, he will often identify the artist doing the character voice over. Of course, we all know that John Hurt is Kane in Alien and horned King from the Black Cauldron. Paul does. 

He also has an uncanny ability to recall dates associated with events. He can tell you who won Best Picture in 1971 (it was Patton by the way) or who played in the World Series in 1995 (Atlanta Braves vs Cleveland Indians). Obviously pretty handy when playing Quizzo. 

He also has some amazing what I call ‘out of the blue’ answers. These usually come as a blurted out answer in a subject area that you would never expect him to have any knowledge of. It's usually accompanied by ‘I don't know where that came from’. One of our favorites happened when he was playing quizzo at a local bar with friends. The question was ‘who saved the ponies from the Schmooze?’  Paul quickly told his team that the answer was the flutter ponies They all looked at him like he had three heads but of course that was the right answer and no one else playing quizzo got it. Even the quizzo moderator wanted to know who knew that answer since he expected that that would stump the whole group. 

One of the other things that's fun about playing quizzo with Paul is that sometimes you have to work a little bit for the answer. He knows the answer but can't necessarily get the name right. So it takes a little work to get the answer out of him. Let me give you an example. We were playing one night and the question was about a famous actor in a particular role. Paul knew who it was but couldn't come up with the name. So he started giving us all kinds of other information about the actor. He told us what he looked like, other movies he had starred in other actors had started with and eventually we figured out who it was. We always have a good laugh out of these. But we always chase them down since he is seldom wrong. 

The other thing that happens when we’re playing trivia with Paul is that he often can't tell you what the answer is but he can spell it. The only conclusion I can come to is that his brain stores that as a picture of the word or name as opposed to how most people store it in their brains. It's always fun to observe because he spells it correctly but his brain just can't read it. 

One of our other recurring themes is the need to have a sense of humor about things. We have had many laughs with Paul about our trivia games. He is a valued member of our quizzo team and comes up with some amazing stuff despite his reading and language difficulties. It is more than likely a product of a very healthy curiosity and a great memory.