What my tourettes was like as a kid

I used to have the head movement, the arm and the squeak, among other tics. The video here shows more-or-less how I remember an average day being.

It's constant head movements like that which caused me to 'give up' reading, and be very slow at writing. I *can* read, and reading magazines, webpages, etc. isn't a problem, but reading a page of a book from start to finish can be a real chore, and it something I don't do for fun. How did I get through school/university? I learnt to do homework from when I was at junior school, where no-one else would have it, which I guess also prepared me for secondary school where the real homework starts getting dished out. In secondary school we would always roleplay any English Literature books ('Romeo & Juliet', 'Macbeth' and 'Of Mice And Men'), and following along in the book was easier then, and I picked up the skill of skimming, so in tests I could find the right part of a section of text/book without needing to read/reread a chapter or page. At university I was lucky enough to be able to pick everything I didn't already know up without the need for heavy reference books.

Nowadays my tourettes syndrome is pretty much unnoticeable (never having had any form of medication, in case you're wondering), but occasionally I have a bad day where at least I notice I'm doing something.

Unlike some though, I wouldn't want a cure for my tourettes, it's just who I am, and I attribute some great decisions in my life to having had it, one of which being my parents sending me to learn to touchtype when I was 8 pretty much as soon as I was diagnosed, which started me on my path to programming.

Ok, now for the video: