WORDS

                                              

                                             Words

                       It is very intrestnig to realize 
                       how do thnigs work whitin our mind...
                       Look at the words, for an exmaple.
                       Tehy can tell thgins of any kind.

                       How do we read, wehre do we start?
                       From the begininng or from the end?
                       If everthriyng was wirtten wonrg,
                       Wuold we be able to undsretand?

                       I've learend a lot thgourhout my life,
                       I had surpsries at many times,
                       I've seen impisosbles tihngs happen,
                       Some very stnrage, some otehr fines...

                       But it was hrad to just beleive
                       what I have read anhoter day...
                       No matter how the wrods are wirtten,
                       we awlays raed them the same way.

                       And piayng attnetion to waht I said,
                       in many wrods taht you jsut read,
                       only the fsirt and the last letter
                       are in the order taht it shulod matter.

   This poem was written in 2004... In a way, it was the beginning of a long series of poems, novels and short stories I've been written since.

   At that time I've learn that we read a word in its entirety, not only the characters which form them.

   As a matter of fact, I read that  when looking at letters, the reader activates a specialized part of the visual system that would coordinate this action with the phonological system he has in his "brain database". As the reader seeks phonological information from print, it puts a kind of "pressure" on the visual system to recognize that information, sending back to the brain as a silent reading or speaking the word.
   I thought it was interesting and wrote the poem...
   In a test, a few days after, I realized that some people would find a few mistakes, not all of them.
   Later, this poem was used in training classes for new nurses of a local hospital, on the town I used to live at, to show them the importance of attention to details...
   In other words, check if the doctor did not leave a scalpel inside the belly he just finished the surgery on.
   Oh!... In that case, don't be afraid to tell him, preferably before the closing stitches are done. And, when you do that, use the right words.



Copyright 2013 Eugenio Colin