Ahhh, an interesting thread!
When I was about 12 years years old I was sent for a number of tests that might explain to my parents and teachers why I constantly scored badly in tests at school. Not 50% or even 35% badly, but 10 to 20%! I'm sure the term dyslexic wasn't around then (I'm 53), but the symptoms I tried to describe seem remarkably similar. Oddly enough, although I could grasp almost nothing (or at least repeat it back) from history, math or geography texts, I'd been reading (at home) at an adult level from quite an early age. Along with (or because of) this I was terribly introverted, and even did badly in "Art" and "Music", both of which I was later to earn my living with fairly successfully. A parallel situation that I never figured out until long after I had left school involved athletics. All through school I was terrified of "Gym". Couldn't climb the ropes, vault the "Horse", do summersaults, and always finished last in any kind of running excercise.
Outside of school it was a different story. My passion was baseball (still is actually) and I went through little League, Pony, and Babe Ruth League, always the best player on my team. Quite an extrovert as well.
This kind of thing can truly make someone feel that they're living a double life, and let's face it, for a teen ager ONE life can be difficult enough!
Over the years I developed theories, and read voraciously to try and make sense of this with no actual answers. I just accepted that I never tried hard enough at school because of plain laziness...having forgotten that it's hard to try ANYTHING when words and numbers just seemed to re-arrange themselves in random order.
Two things that helped me years later happened quite by accident. I decided to take a night school course in (of all things) Leather carving. Now by that time I'd been an entertainer for twenty years and certainly was not seen as shy by most who knew me...but the moment I walked into the school to start the leather class, Whooooo..anxiety attack! It lasted for the next couple of sessions, but was gone by the third. (which, non-coincidentally, was when the instructor asked me to help out with the class, 'cause of my drawing and draughting experience, which is a part of leather carving)
Around the same time I discovered a funny little book by an equally funny little man, who among other things, strongly suggested that to be happier you must be as honest about the things you're ashamed of, as those you're proud of. Kinda frees you up to either have some control over your environment..or, (and even better) CREATE as much of your own environment as your circumstances allow.
I guess in a primitive way I knew that the classroom itself was creating many of the visual and co-ordinational problems when I was a kid, and so I probably missed close to 50% of my school time through totally fraudulent illnesses. Sure got good at excuse notes though. Never had any perceptual problems forging my Mother's signature!
Sorry for rambling on so. Thanks Helen and GG for sharing your experiences.