Learning to Read

Wow, where has the summer gone?  Just in time for the new school year I have a new post.

Growing up, I wanted to be like my older sisters and do whatever they were doing.  I wanted to ride a bike, go down the big slide, ice skate.  But, mostly, I wanted to read.  

I come from a family of readers.  My father reads 3 or 4 books at a time. My mother wasn’t much for books, but she read 4 daily newspapers front to back.  She knew everything that was happening in and around our little Indiana town.  Books were everywhere and bedtime stories were a ritual. Reading seemed like a magical skill, something that only grownups could do, and I so wanted to be grownup.

I went to kindergarten before kids were expected to be able to read at age 5. As I recall, our days were filled with the smell of paste, the taste Salerno butter cookies on our fingers, and the thrills of "Duck, Duck, Goose." But, In my kindergarten classroom, the teacher had put labels on everything--desk, chair, table, door, clock. One day we were talking and I told her I wanted to read.  

She said, "But Chris, you already know how to read!"  She pointed to the sign on the desk, "what does that say?"  

"Desk."

She pointed to the sign on the chair, "what does that say?"  

"Chair."  

"That, is reading!"  

Wait, THAT is reading, that's all there is?  I was expecting to learn some secret language, to have to learn to unlock some complicated code. For me, at least, reading was easy.

In first grade I encountered my first basal reader, My Little Red Storybook.  The first story starred Tom and his wagon. (We were not a Dick and Jane school, but a Tom and Susan school. Of course, Tom got top billing over Susan, but that's another post....)

See Tom.

See Tom ride.  

Ride, Tom, ride.

Ride, ride, ride.  

WOW, with that introduction to the wonders of stories I was off and running.  I sailed through My Little Red Storybook, my blue Storybook, my green and yellow storybooks. Until, one day, I received my first HARDCOVER reader, The Little White House.  I was in Heaven. I was also always in trouble because I couldn’t stop myself from reading ahead. I couldn't get enough and read and read until the teacher threatened to take my book away.

Not everyone caught on so quickly.  Sally Pugh was not a reader.  She didn’t seem to be able to make heads or tails of the printed words.  Sally  lived on the wrong side of the tracks, literally, in our little town.  She had old clothes, her nose was always runny, and she smelled.  We called her Sally P-U. One thing Sally did have was blond hair in short little pigtails, they really looked like pigtails.

Our teacher, thinking to solve two problems at once, sent Sally and me into the hall.  I would listen to Sally read, help her figure out the code.  We sat side by side in the hall and she stumbled through a story.  When she made a mistake, I reached over and pulled her pigtail. Hard.  I don’t know how many times that happened, at least once, maybe 2 or 3.  At some point the teacher came out and saw Sally in tears and sent us back to our seats without a word.  Sally lived in our town for a few more years, she never excelled in school, and then moved away.

What possessed me to do that?  Was I mean? Was I guarding the secret of reading from someone I felt didn’t deserve it, wasn’t worthy? Was I just being a stupid kid?  I still wish I could go back and tell Sally I’m sorry, to show her the magic of reading and let her feel the same joy I had when I learned to read.