Truth In Stone :: The Weblog of Stone Legends

 Making An Impact on Young Lives
By Aela Zamecki

“Never compare your weaknesses to other people’s strengths, but rather match your weaknesses to their weaknesses and your strengths to their strengths. You will be surprised at the reactions.”

- Richard Carey

Richard Carey was a participant in the Project Heroes Program at Shelton School & Evaluation Center in Dallas which teaches life-coping skills by providing students with role models who have achieved success in their own lives despite learning difficulties.

He visited the school in 1998 and gave a very motivating speech to the students and faculty about growing up with dyslexia and how he overcame his disability, becoming a successful and inspirational businessman. Growing up with dyslexia to this day is very challenging. Imagine being an adult and misinterpreting a simple phrase like, “nip it in the bud” to “nip it in the butt,” sparking a revolutionary phrase with the students of “kick it in the ass!”

The students greatly appreciated his candor as well as enthusiasm, writing him many thank you letters. Among his most prized possessions, he keeps them [the letters] tucked away. When I asked to see them, a sentimental grin arose across his face as if he drifted off somewhere for a moment. “Young people,” he said, ” … now that is a tough audience.” They will search you out and touch you. I was humbled by their words,” as he hands them to me. Flipping through the letters, I find that one of the students is Bo Pilgrim’s grand-daughter. Most of them are filled with much the same spelling errors he must have dealt with all these years. I commented quite cynically how much of a struggle it must have been conveying the message. How was it seeing & making out the dramatic errors I ask? With a voice of familiarity I hear him say, “First time spelling ever made sense, it was no struggle to me.”

Todd Reisman | Julie | Stephanie Huberman | Cody | Matthew Huckin | Leslie Wall | Kyle Hayes | Catherine Epps

There was one story he told that seemed to identify with the authors of these letters. So I ask, “what did you compare the suffering of dyslexia with when you were speaking? ” Here is one of the stories he conveyed to me that he told the students:

“You see it’s like computers, the brain has to store a lot of information so you get it when you need it. As an illustration to explain this further, it’s a little bit like wiring a house light, something you might take for granted. Everyone knows to turn the light on in the house, it takes a switch. To make that switch work, you have to run one wire from the switch to the light. Most people think like this on and off are the only possibilities. You know, the type of people who memorize all the answers and repeat them back even when they may not understand the reasoning. You ask and you always get the same answer. What if you’re not asking them the right questions? You won’t get the right answer unless you’re at the one place to turn on the switch.

“Now lets suppose you’re dyslexic. It would be like wiring the light with two switches called a three-way switch, the kind you can turn the same light on from the back door or the front door. It does not take one more wire like the light and the single switch. It takes total of three wires to have two switches that turn on the same light. Likewise, you can now come in either door and still turn the light on. In parallel, your brain is a lot like the three way switch, it may take longer to wire, but you’re the type that can light up with the right answers even if the exact right questions are not ask.  Furthermore, he told the students, “Don’t beat yourselves up. Don’t worry that others may call you slow, your day will come. It takes a little longer to run three times the wire, but then look at all the time you save not running back and forth between the front and the back door. So in time, when you start making the connections they will begin to understand how important all the extra wiring really is. In the end I expect you will be one of the ones that asks the right questions, the only time the right answer is worth anything anyway.”

Another story he shared with the students:

“Once I sent a crew to paint a house. When I wrote down the address I transposed the street numbers (as dyslexic people often do). Well, I found out that there was a life lesson in this and it has stayed with me ever since. It was the basis of a riddle that still proves to be true these days. Why does one mistake cost me three times? Well they showed up at the address I wrote down, but it was the wrong house. That was a good crew and they did the job right! Unfortunately for my wallet they did not paint the right house.”  With that, he asks the students a question “Answer this riddle: How many houses did I paint?” The consensus was “two” rebutting soundly he explained that, “mistakes always come in threes.” I had to paint the wrong house twice, once to the wrong color and then again back to its original color. By the way, neither of which I got paid for. Then I had to paint the right house because it was the one I was going to get paid for.

Moral of the story: Clearly there is difference between the people who do things right and the people who do the right things. Before you paint it right, you better make sure your painting the right house.

Judging from the stack of letters it was clear that his message made a difference. As I walked away from that visit, I couldn’t help but think about his closing words:

“You see all these people who think they get it right will be working for you someday when you have wired the many switches in your brain.”

Little did I know that I’d find myself working for him some years later? I am always intrigued by the way he thinks; it is an out of the box style. As an educator in my former career I cannot help but reflect on the many students over the years, and it has broadened my perspective as well increased my understanding. These people that do the right things really are the people the rest of us work for. It touched me to know, as a teacher, how much a difference this must have made for the them, after all my job was to teach, and to be good at it, I first had to become the student. I think this is what he was trying to say: to do the right things, one must first be the student then be willing to consider the big picture before the details even matter.

Heartfelt he left this message with the students and I believe it’s one that we all need to adhere, “Never compare your weaknesses to other people’s strengths, but rather match your weaknesses to their weaknesses and your strengths to their strengths. You will be surprised at the reactions.”