I Think I've Discovered a Possible Cause of OCD
My dear friend Ann, who with her husband co-manages the online cancer support group that I call home (CancerSurvivorsOnlineNow), read my 100 things and said she was surprised to learn that I have poor reading comprehension. So I decided to write a post about it....
I guess it does seem strange that an English major/teacher has this kind of learning disability, but it's true. I've always had trouble noticing and recalling details, something many people dismiss as a careless lack of attention or an airheadedness on my part. But it really is a disability, one that my teacher back in grade 4 recognized. To try to remedy it, she put me on this SRA reading lab (I can't remember what the initials stand for, surprise surprise). It was a kit that came in a reading box and it had a graphic of Superman on it, so I'm guessing the "S" stood for the man in blue. It consisted of about a million cards with stories of varying length and reading difficulty printed on them, and corresponding cards with reading comprehension questions on the stories. The idea was, you read a story, then answered the questions without peeking back at the story to find the answers. Then you looked on the back of the question card where the answers were, and scored how many responses you had correct. It was an exercise in frustration for me, for the practice did nothing to improve my recall - it only proved over and over again that I was incompetent at this sort of thing. I hated it.
So I cheated. I simply gave myself credit for having done better than I actually had. And I was clever enough to show a gradual but steady improvement in my performance. Heck, I didn't even bother reading the stories any more.
It worked. It satisfied my teacher, who was proud of herself for having "cured" me of my disability; and I didn't have to repeatedly perform a task that made me feel like a loser.
But I did derive benefits from my experience with the SRA lab. For one thing, I learned that it's
ideas, not recall of details, that matters to student readers. No one cares what colour a character's sweater was, nor should they, unless it's an integral clue in a murder mystery or something. So as an English teacher, I don't ask my students to answer dumb questions like that.
For another, it made me conscious of this weakness, and aware that I had to find coping mechanisms. I trained myself to take notes, either mentally or physically, about the kind of stuff that I know I won't be able to recall later on. If I witness a crime or an accident, I methodically make a point of noticing and recording details that might be pertinent later on, like the time, the location, physical descriptions, etc.
And thirdly, I use repetition, just like the folks on Sesame Street, to ensure that stuff is stored in my hard drive. That's why, even with my poor memory (which I frequently tell my students is "good, just short"), I can recite Shakespeare's
Macbeth from beginning to end: because I've taught it so often.
That's why I'm so organized - I'm not braggin; people praise me for it all the time. Organized to the point of OCD. It isn't so much because I'm a neat freak, as it is this: If I don't alphabetize, label, and order things, I will never remember where the heck I put them. And that makes me panicky.
Case in point: I have multiple cans, jars and packages of food goods in the basement pantry. Why? Am I anticipating another Depression? Expecting 100 dinner guests? Planning to open a military training camp?
Nope. It's because my arthritic knees discourage me from trekkin downstairs to check my inventory before I go shopping, and I've forgotten what I have down there. So I buy more. Just in case. So if you see an inventory list taped to my upright freezer door, don't laugh. It's because I don't want to have to throw out ten bags of freezer-burned hamburger buns again. It's wasteful.
If I read or view something that makes a great impression on me, or if I make a point of studying it carefully, then it will be engrained in my memory. But if it's something read or viewed casually, forget it. This can exclude me from a lot of party conversations, when a group of people begin to discuss a plot line that has dissolved into the mist for me. "Have you ever read (or seen) such-and-such?" someone will ask. I stall, and give that constipated look that actors in soap operas use just before the camera breaks away to another scene to keep the viewer in suspense. Hopefully, someone else will answer and I will be spared. Then, while others joyfully chatter about their favourite parts, I sidle over to the appetizer tray or go play with the cat.
It also costs me a lot in movie rentals. I can't count how many times I'm half- or three-quarters of the way through a film, when I realize I've seen it before. No matter; it's kind of a new experience for me, anyway. I just shrug and deal with the fact that the outcome is vaguely familiar.
It doesn't help that I'm easily distracted, too. So often, I go downstairs to do something, get sidetracked and do twenty other things, then climb the stairs and realize I forgot to do or get the thing I went down there for in the first place. So I can identify with people who claim that strokes, advancing age, or chemotherapy have addled their memories. Heck, I can't remember why I opened the fridge door.
