Under the Dome

We were officially engaged on the 8th of June 1991.

In that big old convent house my Mother decided it was okay to give Dean his own bedroom, considering the fact that she had also given my best friend from high school, Debi, a bedroom to live with us and we had 10 bedrooms what was one more, right? Dean did have his own house in Lismore but because of the cost of fuel coming in and out of town I think Dad and Mum justified that it would be more economical for Dean to stay over the night. I really don't know how Mum did it. I have 4 daughters now and 3 of them are teens. There is no way I would let a boy stay over night. She was on the prowl every night making sure we all went to bed in our own rooms. Dean was and still is #thegoldenchild and my parents have always loved him...he can do no wrong so I think they felt he was worth the effort to keep him around, perhaps they even quantified the fact that he was older and is a great example of a member of the church and would help their own girls stay on the straight and narrow path. While Dean was at our home for longer periods of time I was able to observe how he functioned more than when I just saw him socially.

When Dean studied I noticed that he used a huge dome type magnifying glass. The dome on this thing was huge, I mean #StephenKing #UndertheDome size. Well maybe not that huge but non the less it was thick and heavy. It was a hand held magnifier that had no handles, just a dome of thick glass the size of the palm of your hand that weighed about the same as a 300ml can of #coke. Dean would hold his reading material up to his face, almost within an inch from his right eye...his good...not so good eye, and stooping his neck forward he would hold the magnifying glass up against the reading material and move the lense from left to right on top of the page one word at a time. Each word would appear to explode from the page from the normal font size to around an inch in scale. And this is how Dean functioned.

 Instead of studying myself there was often times I would help Dean out by reading long passages of his text books to him. To my surprise Dean had a photographic memory to anything he listened to while studying. I just had to read it to him once and bam! The information that we just read seemed to stick in his brain like glue and he was able to recall the information in a snap. It is amazing how the human brain adapts. For me to do that it was impossible. I am the type of person that has to read, re-read, make the study material into a song of some sort and sing it to myself over and over until it sinks in...Not Dean, read it once, or listen to it once and it is in his brain and can be recalled in an instant!

After talking to him over his ability to do this he explained to me it was the only way he was able to learn at school. There was no special needs adaptive technology teacher in his country school of Tamworth. He had a really good mate named Steven who would sit next to him and verbally tell him what the teacher had written on the board. Without Steven, Dean tells me, he would never had gotten through high school. We are forever greatful for his mate Stephen.