I remember the exact moment I realized that I knew how to read.
According to my grandmother, I could read when I was four years old. I don't know if that's necessarily right. I don't remember doing a lot of reading. Maybe I could read a few words here and there, and memorize the books she read me. There was one in particular that I wanted every single night. It was one of those Disney book club books that you got through the mail, and it was about Scrooge McDuck. I don't remember the story or anything, but I do remember that Scrooge McDuck was my fucking idol. The guy lived like he was tied to a shoestring budget, but he had a vault so full of money that he could swim in it. I loved that book. Another one I loved was about Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby, which my sweet and well-meaning grandmother unfortunately read to me in what may go down in history as the most offensive accent the world has ever known.
Anyway, according to my grandmother, I could read at age four. I call baloney, because I remember the exact age when I learned to read, and it was six. I know, it's cool to say you were reading Shakespeare at age three, but I was six, and I wasn't even in the top reading group in my class. But I remember we got our reading book, and it was a skinny paperback book that was perfectly square. The cover was green, with lighter green printing, and a picture of what I believe was a dog house. Maybe I'm just confusing this with the fact that the first story in the book was about a dog, but whatever. I had such anxiety about being handed that book, because I didn't know how to read. I knew how to recognize a few words, like "gas" and "food" when we were in the car, but I didn't know how to read. Only grownups knew how to read.
Try and think back to when you didn't know how to read, and what reading seemed like to you. I remember that written words looked a certain way. Now, I can't imagine what they looked like before I knew how to read them. But reading was definitely an intimidating thing back then. Grown ups were like gods, because they knew how to read and reading was the key to so much stuff. You had to read the directions on the pudding box. You had to read the TV Guide. You had to read the mail. Reading is involved in so many activities.
So, I sat there with my little book, and I opened the cover and hesitantly started looking on the first page for words I knew. A. I knew A, it wasn't really a word, just a letter. Dog. Well, obviously I knew Dog, but only because I memorized it. I wasn't actually reading. In. Yup, I knew In. Wait a minute...
By the end of my second page, I stopped reading and just stared at the page. And my little six year old head held just one, profanity laden thought:
Holy shit. I can read!
I will never forget how awesome that feeling was. I could read. It was all going to be downhill from there, because I could read. In the end, maybe that's what we're all looking for when we pick up a book. Reading is like a drug addiction, we're always chasing that greater high, trying to find a book that makes us feel as awesome as our favorites did. And I think that feeling is probably inspired by how we felt the very first time we realized that we had become readers.
I have no memory of not being able to read. My mom says I was reading books at 3 (beyond memorization), but my parents told me that the first time they realized I could read was when I was a toddler, and we were walking through a parking lot, and I delightedly shouted "Toyota!" after reading it off the back of a truck.
ReplyDeleteThis story is not meant to demonstrate the egocentric Shakespeare-at-age-3 thing, but to share my own cute story in response to you sharing yours. :)
I can't remember not being able to read either! Maybe it's because I'm fast approaching the elderly mark--but no, I remember this: one day I'm in the car and my father is spelling out the word "stop" to me, and the next thing I know is I'm reading. Before that, my not-knowing-what-those-marks-meant life is a blank. (I have other earlier memories, but none of them involve reading in any form. Mostly they involve the grasshoppers in our back yard and my giant fear of them.)
ReplyDeleteNot that, you know, I read Shakespeare or anything like that either. I read the standard picture books with words included, and then went on to books that were more words than pictures, but for a long time I hung back from the huge leap to books without any illustrations at all. I'm not sure why, I think the pictures gave me some sort of mental anchorage. But one day when I was about eight or nine I decided to take the plunge to full-text books.
I forgot to say I think I may have been about four when I officially learned to read.
ReplyDeleteWe are in parallel universes today. Just had a similar conversation here at library with ds children's librarian. I could read at age four through sheer determination and a helpful mom and kindergarten teacher, along with older sisters for inspiration! So empowering to read to my kindergarten class at age five. I thought nothing could stop me. A bit downhill from there but still an accomplishment!
ReplyDeleteI remember reading those paper practice Kindergarten books to my little sister when I was five. I would sit by her crib, with the autumn sun streaming through the windows, and read through each book I had.
ReplyDeleteBut I can't remember the time before reading at all. I can't even remember how it felt to learn to read, which is weird considering how life-changing it really is.
Me too. I learned to read in Kindergarten. My mother tried to teach me to read at two, and since I showed no knack for it, she believed I was retarded. Trouble is she forgot to teach me the alphabet which is kinda the key to this whole reading thing. I went from totally illiteracy to reading grown up novels in the span of weeks.
ReplyDeleteI totally remember that too! The moment where those marks on the page suddenly have meaning and it kind of feels like the whole world is open to you now (or at least any of the books on the shelf).
ReplyDeleteI'd never thought of my addiction to reading as chasing a high to rival that but it absolutely makes sense in the most amazing of ways.
*raises hand* Picture books often have a higher vocabulary and reading level than even early chapter books. They're often MORE difficult to read, not less. There is NO REASON kids should stop reading picture books at eight or nine. Any reading is a good thing and often parents will encourage their kids to move beyond them far too quickly. Heck, I'm 19 and I still love them.
ReplyDelete*gets off soapbox*
I honestly don't remember when I learned to read, either. I remember being very annoyed the year before I went to kindergarten because they wouldn't give me my own library card even though I could write my name. (Arthur SET ME UP with that one.) I remember going to kindergarten (at 4, turning 5 the december of that year) and being VERY ANNOYED that I wasn't allowed to write my name in all capitals. I think I could probably recognize a lot of sight-words, but not really read read til first grade.
Well, I WAS reading Shakespeare at three, but it was admittedly annoying because of all the "thou"s and "thee"s and odd references to genitals and such. ;p
ReplyDeleteI much preferred The Pokey Little Puppy. And the one about the really fat cat that ate everything, including people. I forget the title. It was creepy.
I don't remember what it was like being unable to read, nor anything about the learning process. But I do remember very strongly how I felt about my particular favourite books at age 5 or 6. Each of them was an entire separate world to me, and every time I opened a favourite book, I was going to that world *for real*. And somehow it was a new experience every time.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't until my early 20s that I revisited most of these books, cleaning out my old boxes. The disappointment was intense. Those other worlds weren't there any more - it was nothing in the words or pictures that had conjured them, just my 5-year-old imagination. Somehow I thought reading The Minpins at 21 would be the same as reading it at 5, but it's like the cool story has been stolen and replaced with a bunch of boring marks on paper.
Ya know, a really neat way to remember what it was like not being able to read is looking at a book in a foreign language. I'm teaching myself Korean, and when I first started, all I did was stare at the characters, as they had no meaning to me. But slowly, I'm picking up new words, ablle to sound things out, really like being 3 again.
ReplyDelete