Upside-up

When our family reads the Bible in the evenings, we have some rather odd traditions.  Well, I guess only one truly odd one.  Our Uno-like fashion of reading has mostly been relegated to breakfast readings, and in the evening we do nearly everything regular-type except for the fact that we read with our Bibles upside down.  And when we have company we let them choose for themselves, but we still read upside down, as there's no reason to change just for the sake of company.

So Monday night we had a friend of the family over, and, come time for Bible reading, we explained that we read upside down and he was welcome to join us.  So he did, no big deal, and read quite well.  Afterwards, he told us that he was pretty sure that it was easier, due to his dyslexia (I agree!  You see the word more clearly as a whole, and have less chance to mix up the interior letters).  I had no idea he suffered from dyslexia, but he said that it was so bad he was pretty sure that he would have gotten into Heaven even without getting saved.  : )  This may or may not be an exaggeration, but he and I had an amusing conversation about our dyslexic tendencies.

I've always claimed a little dyslexia.  Try to get me to tell my left from my right and you'd be hard-pressed to get a quick answer.  I mix up words and write backwards and when I look at the letter "s" I still don't know if it's forward or backward.  But I'm pretty sure that reading was just so important in my house that I never got the chance to be dyslexic.  Other kids would have been diagnosed and fretted over, but not us!  When I was quite young (I learned to read by the age of five or something, so it had to have been before that) I remember saying that I was special because I couldn't read yet, and all of my older siblings could, therefore I was special.  My logic has never been all that sharp.

So I'm thankful that reading was just something that we learned to do, somewhat akin to walking and holding a spoon correctly.  I can read just fine (mostly...) and feel that I'm not handicapped in any way.  And the knowledge I glean from reading is well worth the occasional mix-up of "scarred" and "scared."

Plus, if it ever gets confusing, I guess I could start reading everything upside down!