10
Loading video...
By Alyce Collins
Senior Reporter
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
A grand mal seizure at the age of 16 left Michal Sklar terrified for her health, only to discover she had gained an unexpected new skill which she dubs “the most useless superpower.”
Many years may have passed, but Sklar still remembers the day vividly. It was the day before her seventeenth birthday in October 2010 and Sklar, of New York, was preparing to speak during her high school assembly. She told Newsweek that she got up to introduce that morning’s speaker, sat back down in her seat and the next thing she recalls, she was in hospital.
“The seizure was idiopathic, to this day, no one knows why it happened,” Sklar, now 32, said. “I spent almost a week in the hospital undergoing extensive testing, including an EEG, an MRI, and several other evaluations.
Read More on Health
“I remained under close medical supervision for the months that followed, but none of the tests provided an explanation for what had triggered the episode.”
...
Several days into her hospital stay, Sklar noticed that she was mentally processing words backwards. She initially dismissed it, but it was hard to ignore that she was suddenly able to process everything her doctors and nurses said in the reverse.
“Initially, this newfound skill really freaked me out. I had just gone through a dramatic medical episode, and now, all of a sudden, my brain was reversing words,” she continued.
While Sklar has always been a language lover, this new skill took that to an extreme. She found herself waking up in the morning singing Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” stuck in her head—but each word was backwards.
In case you are wondering what that sounds like: “s’ti a evol yrots, ybab tsuj yas sey."
Researchers have found that seizure activity can disrupt the language systems that help people process words. In some epilepsy-related conditions, language changes can be even more pronounced. MedlinePlus Genetics describes the epilepsy-aphasia spectrum as a group of disorders in which seizure activity is associated with impairments in speaking, reading and writing. According to the Epilepsy Foundation, when seizures involve the left temporal lobe, people may experience difficulties with word retrieval, naming objects and producing the correct words.
There was a certain reluctance to tell anyone at the time. Sklar opened up to a friend at school about her new skill, and while dumbfounded, she thought it was incredibly cool. Over time, Sklar started telling her family, many of whom jested that this was “strangely on brand” for her.
“I hadn’t shared it with the doctors when I first discovered the skill because there were already wires connected to my brain, and the more pressing matter was figuring out why I had a seizure in the first place,” Sklar said.
“By this point, it had become part of my identity. To my disappointment, when I brought it up to my neurologist, she dismissed it. I grabbed some papers from her desk and started showing her how quickly I could read in reverse, but she didn’t seem interested in discussing it.”
Sklar’s ability enables her to flip each word in a sentence in reverse, so “hi, I’m Michal, and it’s such an honor to be featured in Newsweek” becomes: “iH, m’I lahciM, dna s’ti hcus na ronoh ot eb derutaef ni keewsweN.” She has even named this quirky language “sdrawkcab.”
Everyday words come to Sklar instantly, although words that are four or more syllables long can take longer to reverse. Of course, there is one question that she gets all too often—can she flip supercalifragilisticexpialidocious backwards? The answer, sadly, is no.
Needless to say, Sklar loves her quirky party trick which always serves as a top tier icebreaker. Her 7-year-old son has also deemed it “the coolest thing” that he brags about to friends.
Sklar told Newsweek: “My husband and I do have sdrawkcab words that have become part of our own couple language–the backwards versions have replaced the forwards ones. Spoons have become ‘snoops,’ stop has become ‘pots,’ and ‘doog thgin’ is how we say good night.”
It may be “the most useless superpower,” but it has provided Sklar and her family with endless amounts of fun.
Sklar hopes to encourage others to embrace what makes them different rather than feel embarrassed by them. She often shares details about her life as a backwards speaker on social media (@momentsofmichal on TikTok), much to the internet's delight.
“The fact that my brain could adapt in this way and create an entirely new way of processing language continues to amaze me, and honestly, still freaks me out sometimes,” Sklar said.
Is there a health issue that's worrying you? Let us know via health@newsweek.com. We can ask experts for advice, and your story could be featured on Newsweek.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Charlotte Nisbet and Emma Lee-Sang
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines