A little escapism

How I learned to read

neon girl reading a book under a tree in the summer

When I was four, I used to beg my mother to teach me to read. She had been listening to the child-care gurus of the time, who said that the teachers were the experts at teaching children how to read and that it would socially stunt a child to learn to read before their peers.

Honest to g-d. They were really saying that in 1965-66 so my mother refused to teach me. She didn’t even show me my name. I had to wait til I was six to actually learn to read. I would sit in various corners of the house far away from the noise of two siblings and look at picture books. I would imagine stories for the pictures.

Even when we left a city near Oakland, California, I scribbled messages to my friends and told them that it said I would miss them very much. I passed them out like gifts because to me, even at five, I believed words were gifts.

I still wish my mother had taught me to read at four. When I was six I had a teacher named Miss Sargeant. It was her last year of teaching students how to read. She used various methods like memorizing word lists, reading out loud in groups, and sounding out words. Sometimes we could go home early if we could read the sentence on the chalkboard.

At first it was hard. My father would let me sit in the bathroom while he shaved and I would read the word lists to him. We made tags to put on all the furniture and other things so I could see and associate the word with the object. It was as intensive as a college course. None of my college courses were this hard.

One day it suddenly came together and I was in the highest group. We learned how to read in the first half of the year and then the second half of the year we read books and poems. At the last day of the year, we showed off our new skills to our parents.

Miss Sargeant was the top teacher in the school, but they still didn’t renegotiate her contract. They had these new programs they wanted to experiment on the children. My sister who was a year after me learned programmed reading. She still barely reads today.

The premise of the new program was that children already knew how to read and would learn intuitively by seeing the word and reading it. I don’t know who came up with such a dumb theory but an entire group of people who were taught this way became the unreaders. This was the start of children learning that reading was hard and it would never get easier. So why do it?

By the time I left first grade I was reading on a sixth grade level.

Second grade I saw my first programmed reading book with questions. I was told to do the first lesson, which was two pages. I did it in ten minutes, then I got started on the rest of the workbook. By the end of the week I had finished it. I asked the teacher if I could bring a book in to read.

There were several of us who were reading above average and the teachers realized that if we got too bored we would probably disrupt the class. They were right because most of the high readers were boys. But I was bored to. At the same time my teacher discovered that I couldn’t read the chalkboard unless I was standing in front of it. It was another disruption, of course.

A few weeks later I had glasses and I’ve worn glasses—mostly.

neon bored school girl looking out the window

From then on, I found school extremely boring except for science. If I wanted to learn something new, I would check out a book. I found that the subjects taught in school were so basic that I had to find the knowledge for myself. We didn’t have the internet and I couldn’t get a library card at my age. Even the librarian in the school library wouldn’t let me read off of the 5th and 6th grade shelves. I was too young for those subjects. I finally got my mother to check out books for me.

By the time I was eleven, I had read Shakespeare, several biographies of Presidents and leading figures like Benjamin Franklin, and discovered sci-fi and fantasy. A couple of years later I met Ray Bradbury’s books, Andre’ Norton, Isaac Asimov, and others. I became enmeshed in other worlds and began to escape.

At one point my parents decided that I was “addicted” to books. They forced me to quit. I would hide books all around the house and would read ten minutes here and ten minutes there so I could read. I would carry a book in my pants. That worked for a few weeks until my mother discovered it. I read between chores. I did win because they couldn’t break me of reading. I had a deep need to read.

Without books, I wouldn’t have known there was a wide world out there that I wanted to explore. Without books I would still be in that little town near Skinwalker Ranch. By the way, I have played in Bottle Hollow lake as a teenager. Without books I wouldn’t have left my home, joined the Navy, and met my late husband, Otto Tune.

I still escape in books. If I have a choice between a book and a movie or show, the book wins out every time. If I love a series, I will read it more than once. Two authors are my go-tos when I am feeling down or need pain relief. Books are better than aspirin for this.

So the two authors are Ilona Andrews and Pam Uphoff. I want to read Kate Daniels again. I really enjoyed the Inkeeper series— all Andrews. With Pam Uphoff, I love the mentalist magic combined with science. Plus I will re-read Andre Norton’s older fantasy books. Norton’s themes of young people escaping horrible situations and then learning the world, did help me to leave and avoid the traps for young women set by unscrupulous people.

There are so many authors that gave me the courage to face the next problem in my life. The stories strengthened me and I kept putting one step in front of another.

Yes, I may read too much. Yes, I would rather read than talk to people. But what of it? Life is hard. Adulting is hard. When it becomes too much— Let me read.