(before i tell this story, it's ironic - and funny - that this is a post on a blog titled, "let's just get this straight.")
it wasn't until i was a sophomore in college that i found out - and was shocked when i did - that not everybody tastes sounds (synesthesia) like i do. it wasn't until this week that i found out - and was shocked when i did - that not everybody reads words backwards like i do.
i'm not talking about dyslexia. i'm talking about "backwards speech," sometimes referred to as "reverse speech."
like synesthesia, not many people have backwards speech. leave it to me to have both.
people with backwards speech have it in various forms (ditto with synesthesia). some people literally have backwards speech, meaning that they can talk backwards. more common are those, like me, who read backwards. but again, not dyslexia. people who talk backwards or read backwards know that they are doing it. and they do it deliberately.
for example......almost without fail, when i am driving, i will read the road signs backwards. if it says "stop," my brain immediately reads "pots." i don't really think it says pots. i know it says stop. but it's more fun if it says pots. :)
whatever make of car i am behind at a stop sign (i mean, at a pots sign), immediately becomes the backwards version of whatever it is. so, if the letters t-o-y-o-t-a are spread across the back of the car, i think to myself, hmmmm......another atoyot lover, just like me.
or another adnoh lover.
or an aik driver.
if i'm at the grocery, i don't look for a tub of margarine, i look for a but of one.
i thought everybody did this. i was shocked to find out that they don't.
but i think maybe my dad does it. he used to always call beer, "reeb," and he had a nickname for me when i was a kid......my last name, spelled backwards - "niknar."
i'm going to go call him right now and ask him if he says or sees anything else backwards.
i'll let you know what he syas.
