Reading funny stuff can be funny. Can’t it?

Reading funny stuff can be funny. Can’t it?

If you are a fluent reader then you enjoy the stuff you read. It is hard to understand why some people are reluctant to read. After all funny books make you smile; scary books get right inside your head, informative books tell you what you want to know. Why wouldn’t people want some of that?

If you are struggling to read this, then you understand.

 You would love to be able to sink into a book, be amused, excited, scared, be transported to another world, another time. After all that is why you like film, TV and perhaps theatre or dance.

If you enjoy those twisting and turning plots get a thrill out of pitting your wits against the author then it really is hard to understand why others do not.

Perhaps they were lazy, had the wrong education, were not taught their ‘phonics’, had parents who could not ‘be asked’.

Ok, so let’s think about those people whose parents sent them away to school, paid for professionals to care and nurture them.  At least they are not risking getting it wrong as parents and they are paying for highly qualified teachers in small classes to give them the right attention, do all the right things if they are having any difficulties.

But still some do not enjoy reading; some give up...so is that what dyslexia is?

If you listen to someone telling a joke, it is not what they say it is the way they say it! The musicality, the intonation, the timing is what gives the buzz.

When you read, the enjoyment is in the way you change speed, change the intonation in your head. In the way you hear /think it in your head. 

If you are stuck in one gear, then it gets boring. There is no fun, the point is missed, or you have to really analyse each sentence to try and work out what it really means.  Possibly a bit like the difference between driving a car stuck in first gear with poor brakes and driving a really responsive car able to adjust speed to the demands of the road and other users.

In that slow moving, ,unresponsive car, where you are always afraid of not noticing what is going on around you as you concentrate on the getting the car along the road, afraid that you may not be able to stop, being overtaken by everyone around you and actually seeming to annoy them all because you are getting in the way… You have to be pretty special, determined to keep going.

What is really annoying, is other people, mocking you, blaming you as if you do not want to enjoy the drive.  Also they always seem to test your memory of the journey by ‘reading and writing’ that sort of kicks you in the teeth when you know there are other ways of showing how good you are.

Ok so if you are lucky, other people like you understand your predicament and help you find ways of getting to your destination and enjoying the journey more. Performance poets and stand up comedians get inside your head without any reading. Seminars can lead to great understanding of complex ideas.

Actually you find loads of ways of surviving and thriving, so much so that you may find yourself competing with those in the smart cars!  You develop skills which the people in the fast cars would never have any ideas about. It might be mind mapping, sentence analysis.

Just imagine that with all these skills, you get shown how to change gear in your car, how to fix the brakes.  That there was nothing really wrong with your car in the first place, just a few adjustments needed... 

As long as you have not crashed, or abandoned the car then the future could be fun, the books could be funnier, more exciting more enveloping, life more exciting and with all those other skills that you have developed, you may well find other people getting frustrated when you overtake them!

Of course this may not be a real possibility, perhaps.