IN SEARCH OF THE ELUSIVE WHY

I was just writing about a remarkable 10-year-old I know and how hard she works to read. She is dyslexic. She is also smart, organized and determined. She has taught me so much this year about the illogic of English. Any rule you can come up with for pronunciation or spelling, you can find an exception, usually on the very next page.

And then my mouse froze. Hm. Seems I remember vaguely something about Cont-Alt-Delete. Too late. I just closed out and lost the whole thing. Now I am wondering if my post will work. But I was wondering anyway.

You see, we didn't FIX my blog. I didn't do anything different. So I don't know WHY, and since age four, I've had this burning desire to know that. But I don't know, and I don't know where to go to find the answer. I hate that. One reason I keep stumbling around on the internet is the incredible amount of information if I can just figure out how to get to it, and increasingly I'm getting there. (I still don't know where you find chat rooms, or how they work, or what the etiquette is.) Thank GAWD for Ambulance Driver and his wide array of listed blogs. He has enlarged my reading sites immeasurably. Always, of course, after reading his first (fawn, polish, obsequious flattery.) (But he really is good, and I used to get paid for writing, so maybe I'm an Expert.)

This keeps circling back to the dyslexic 10-year-old, I see. Every day she bellies up to the books not understanding WHY the words work the way they do, but determined to conquer them. She looks for patterns. She applies the rules so far as they work. (like the word like. See the silent E. That means a long I. That's the rule. Except rule violates what I just said. Mule doesn't.)

So she struggles with her words for her survival, and I struggle with computer writing for my pleasure, and because we struggle, we both wonder WHY so much more than if it were easy to assimulate and just accepted.