This evening, I inadvertently gave a great lesson on why people with dyslexia should be careful reading multi-colored maps without help or extra thought. I had worked hard to push my dyslexia into the background and have published my blog for some years when almost everyone told me I could never do it. It was not easy, but it was possible and especially rewarding.

I can do it and have done it, but tonight was an excellent example of my challenges – I got all of the colors wrong. And I know what the colors really represent!

And it brings back some hard memories. As blog readers know, I often see things incorrectly; I have an excellent editing program that corrects me almost all of the time. But not this time.

Fortunately, readers alerted me the right way, and I fixed the post.

Blue is snow; green is rain; pink is ice. I got everything wrong but the ice.

I thought it would be great fun to invite the blog readers to track the storm here alongside. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea. I take pictures without much trouble and have learned to write clearly with occasional help. Perhaps I’ll stick to that tomorrow.

The odd thing is that I know (at least about the green, I see it all the time) and know green means rain and thunderstorms, and blue means snow,  but the truth is that I didn’t see the colors right until I looked at them again after several people took the trouble to correct me. I thank them for that and their grace.

I’ll use this to promote awareness because dyslexic kids often have it rough, and I want to make the point that one can deal with it and live normally.

Attention dyslexic kids: being dyslexic doesn’t mean you are less (or more) intelligent than anyone else. Dyslexic kids often have delayed speech, mix up sounds or syllables in long words, confuse left from right, have trouble tying shoes, and difficulties memorizing addresses, phone numbers, or alphabets (and sometimes, weather maps.)

In simple terms, Dyslexia is a learning disability that makes it difficult to read, write and spell despite average intelligence and adequate instruction. It is caused by the brain’s inability to process information received from the eyes or ears into understandable language or, sometimes, images. It does not mean that dyslexic students are lazy, slow, not trying hard, or not intelligent.

It just means they need to be taught differently. When I was in school, disability testing was unheard of. You just got yelled at by teachers and parents.

I wasn’t diagnosed with dyslexia until I was out of school, and I taught myself how to compensate for it with the help of a good doctor. It works 98 percent of the time, but the other 2 percent can be unsettling, even humiliating. I have learned not to beat myself over it; there are always people willing to do that for me and others.

Nobody called me stupid tonight, which my teachers often did. But I admit to feeling stupid at times, like tonight. Anyway, I’m on the right track now. The radar at 8:40 shows us surrounded by pink, and we can hear the ice falling on the snow. Reading the map correctly will be snowing by ll p.m. and much of the night.

The weather service predicts three to seven inches for the Capital District, which is us. East of us will get a lot more. The gates here are covered in ice, as are the cars. We won’t be going anywhere tomorrow, and hopefully, the power will stay on. It will get colder tomorrow, and the ice will be around for a while. Sometimes I can’t get the car doors open without some hot water.

And we have to melt the gates to the pasture. The weather donkeys and sheep hate the most; at least they will be in the barn and out of the ice rain.

I guess you can do better than me when tracking the storm since so many people got it right. I’ll get back to writing and taking photos. And thanks for the very civil corrections.

And good luck with the storm. Half the country is going through it.