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    How to Yodel Standing on Your Head in a Toilet: It's as Easy as - Living in a World Without Numbers
    How to Yodel Standing on Your Head in a Toilet: It's as Easy as - Living in a World Without Numbers
    How to Yodel Standing on Your Head in a Toilet: It's as Easy as - Living in a World Without Numbers
    Ebook96 pages1 hour

    How to Yodel Standing on Your Head in a Toilet: It's as Easy as - Living in a World Without Numbers

    By Kathryn Hopson

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    About this ebook

    Owing up to and admitting to having a learning disability as an adult something I have tried to cover up for most of my 45 years is not an admission that I would have considered making until four years ago. It was then that I discovered there was a name for what I live with every day. I learned that it is a disability that affects between four to six percent of the worlds population. It has been recognized for decades by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), but very little is known about the disorder in Australia, the country of my birth. The title of my book, How to yodel standing on your head in a toilet It's as easy as living in a world without numbers, came to me very quickly once I actually began to write my story. But whats a toilet got to do with anything? I hear you ask. There is a very simple answer. In writing a book about a disability it is important to communicate to people how it makes you feel, and the emotions you experience. I could have simply called my book Two and two dont make four or Life simply doesnt add up, but would you really want to read something like that? Neither of these two or the many other alternatives really explains the endless frustrations of dealing with a learning disability or how to develop the strength to overcome it.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTrafford Publishing
    Release dateOct 3, 2008
    ISBN9781466984226
    How to Yodel Standing on Your Head in a Toilet: It's as Easy as - Living in a World Without Numbers
    Author

    Kathryn Hopson

    The word dyscalculia is something I did not know existed until 2003. It is amazing to me as an adult that I only discovered the name for what I have lived with on a daily basis all these years through ÔsurfingÕ the Internet and finding an American web site that talked about difficulties with mathematics. On this site I had an instant rapport with what I was reading. It struck me instantly Ð I recognized me! Distinctively Australian I was born in January 1962 in the small town of Gunnedah in New South Wales, Australia. The climate is extremely hot and very dry in summer. I remember when I was young how the dirt roads would billow pink clouds of the bull dust kicked up by the large road trains carrying brown sheep to the local abattoirs. The huge paddocks filled with waving golden wheat and pink galahs surrounded our little 580 acre farm. The farm is now sadly gone, but the old house still stands, though its new owners now have horses not sheep, and there is no longer any wheat. The roads are all tarred now, and the bull dust is restricted to the drought-stricken hills on the outskirts of the town. To describe what growing up in a small country town in New South Wales was like it is easiest to simply say, ÒGunnedah is so hot and dry that in the paddocks the sheep simply suck rocks to surviveÉÓ

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      Book preview

      How to Yodel Standing on Your Head in a Toilet - Kathryn Hopson

      © Copyright 2008 Kathryn Hopson

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

      Note for Librarians: A cataloguing record for this book is available from Library and Archives Canada at www.collectionscanada.ca/amicus/index-e.html

      ISBN: 978-1-4251-3961-2

      ISBN13: 978-1-4669-8422-6 (e)

      We at Trafford believe that it is the responsibility of us all, as both individuals and corporations, to make choices that are environmentally and socially sound. You, in turn, are supporting this responsible conduct each time you purchase a Trafford book, or make use of our publishing services. To find out how you are helping, please visit www.trafford.com/responsiblepublishing.html

      Our mission is to efficiently provide the world’s finest, most comprehensive book publishing service, enabling every author to experience success. To find out how to publish your book, your way, and have it available worldwide, visit us online at www.trafford.com/10510

      Image414.JPG

      www. trafford.com

      North America & international

      toll-free: 1 888 232 4444 (USA & Canada)

      phone: 250 383 6864 ♦ fax: 250 383 6804

      email: [email protected]

      The United Kingdom & Europe

      phone: +44 (0)1865 487 395 local rate: 0845 230 9601

      facsimile: +44 (0)1865 481 507 mail: [email protected]

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4

      Contents

      Schooldays

      Foreword

      INTRODUCING DYSCALCULIA

      PART I

      My Background-Distinctively Australian

      PART II

      Spare The Rod And Sow The Humiliation

      PART III

      The girl has guts—Dame Joan Sutherland

      Summing up…

      How to Yodel

      Standing on Your Head in a Toilet

      It’s as easy as-

      Living in a world without numbers

      By

      Kathryn Hopson

      A memoir of one woman’s battle with dyscalculia and her survival in the New South Wales public education system in Australia during the 1960s through the 1980s.

      Image420.JPGImage426.JPG

      Dedication

      In loving memory of my mother

      MERLE HUNT

      2 March 1935 ~ 27 December 2006

      Acknowledgements

      Thank you to Brad, my wonderful and patient husband,

      who is always there to help me.

      Image432.JPG

      To our very clever children Ben and Emily, who call me

      their nerdy mum. I would not have been able to complete

      this book without your love and support.

      Image438.JPG

      Schooldays

      What would we kids have done

      Without warm crates of milk left out in the sun,

      Then when it smelt like slightly warm sick,

      To make us drink it-they added flavored Quick!

      Do you recall everyone was called a dag!

      Standing tall to sing altogether God Save the Queen

      And saluting our flag.

      Getting caned for doing ‘nothing at all’?

      On tough chubby hands that seemed too small

      We carried Trixie Belden in our brown clunky ports,

      In our cloakrooms we kept spare skirts and shorts,

      Our teachers blew whistles and drilled us to march,

      For monotonous days spent in Anzac Day parks.

      Where we stood to attention, sometimes in the rain,

      Not allowed to whinge or complain,

      And everyone knew by chapter and verse,

      Lest we forget which we had to rehearse.

      We had dunnies for toilets and bars of grey soap,

      We sang at eisteddfods and played skip rope,

      We shot marbles and elastics in the yard,

      We stood for hours, ‘hands on heads’

      With teacher’s pets—prefects—always on guard.

      School, though I like to look back with affection,

      For me is not always a pleasant recollection.

      But try as we might to forget childhood tears,

      I like to think it has shaped the who I’ve become

      And made me forever to face up to my fears.

      Kathryn Hopson

      Image444.JPG

      Foreword

      Writing a short story about my life was one of those things that seemed like a great idea at the time, even though I do not consider myself an author or writer at all. Owning up to that fact as well as admitting to having a learning disability as an adult—something I have tried to cover up for most of my 46 years—is not an admission that I would have considered making until four years ago. It was then that I discovered there was a name for what I live with every day. I learnt that it is a disability that affects between four to six percent of the world’s population. It has been recognized for decades by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), but very little is known about the disorder in Australia, the country of my birth. I discovered that how I see and understand numbers in my life is very different from the way most people perceive them. In writing this book about my experience with dyscalculia, it is with the hope that in reading my story, others may be helped to not only recognize themselves, but to realize they are not alone.

      My life is extremely full and rewarding. I recently retired from my twenty-three-year career as a library technician and I remain a casual teachers’ aide at our local high school. My husband and I have enjoyed twenty one years of very happy marriage and business partnership. For the past eight years we have owned and operated a successful real estate business on beautiful Bribie Island just north of Brisbane, Australia where I now work full time. The rest of my time is spent managing our two very normal, very busy teenagers—an eighteen-year-old son and a sixteen-year-old daughter.

      Finding time to actually sit down and put my thoughts on paper about something that to this day I wish would simply go away has been a challenge. Like everything else in my life, I choose to view my disability as something to confront. Some people with disabilities find a refuge in the label ‘disability’ and use it to ‘disable’ themselves from having a go and achieving more with their lives. I hope my story will empower others with similar problems to develop the confidence to admit they too have a learning disability.

      The title of my book, How to yodel while standing on your head in a toilet-It’s as easy as living in a world without numbers, came to me very quickly once I actually began to write my story. But what’s a toilet got to with anything I hear you ask. There is a very simple answer. In writing a book about a disability it is important to communicate to people how it makes you feel, and the emotions you experience. I could have simply called my book Two and two don’t make four or Life simply doesn’t add up but would you really want to read something like that? Neither of these two or the many other alternatives really explains the endless frustrations of dealing with a learning disability or how to develop the strength to overcome them.

      Image450.JPG

      INTRODUCING DYSCALCULIA

      ~ Okay-Let’s get Yodelling ~

      And Stand on your Head in a Toilet!

      If someone were to ask you to do this—stand on your head in a toilet and yodel—what would be your first reaction? Firstly, why would you want to do it? Would you even want to try to attempt something you

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