By Orla O’Connor

I hate words

Words and I have never been friends.  I did not like learning them I never liked using them.  As a child I would memorise my whole storybooks.  I did not understand how the weird scribbles in my Biff, Chip and Kipper book could possibly translate to the language that we spoke.  By year 2 the books got too big to memories.  This meant I was forced to learn to read age 7 and I hated every second of it. 

Words started fights for me with my parents.  Chipper was buying a flamingo statue in the book for some unknown bizarre reason, that was never explained, and the seller told him “its going cheep”.  My Mum blamed my lack of attention as to why I did not understand such a piece of comical genius.  But it made no sense to me.  Why would that be a strange sentence?  I still think the word wind is weird.  To wind someone up and the change in the wind how can that be the same word?

Words forced me to wear glasses that I hate, and worse yet to use overlays, and more recently tinted glasses.  I love looking like Elton John as much as the next person but not every day of my life.   The highlight of my day is not the moment when a child asks her Mummy why I am reading the Metro with sun glasses on and it is raining outside. (Right now they are lost in America, so I’m literally writing this blind thanks words)

Words made me miss playtime.  Every Friday we would have a spelling test and every week despite the pressure and encouragement from my parents and child minders I would fail, epically.  Don’t get me wrong I owe my friendship to the lunch ladies to words but I would still have preferred to be in the playground. 

By secondary school I was having private tuition to improve my writing and reading.  Although they worked and I can write and read with a level of success I still dislike words.  Still resent the problems that they have caused me. 

Then came SCA, a place that I am falling in love with and is fast becoming a home to me.  That is teaching me the value in communicating in new and exciting ways, with the exceptions of SCABs.  SCABs to me are a chore, a horrid task that I dread as an unfortunate consequence of being at SCA, even now I am trying to flesh this out a little to fill the 500 word minimum.  Changing my I’m to I am’ and my dint’s to did not’s. 

So taking Buddhist Ben’s advice I have set a goal for this year.   I have decided to tolerate writing.  Words and I will never be friends, too much has happened between us.  But we could be civil.  So when we run into each other and I have to write my SCAB we can get through it with relative ease.