Not so long ago, after TVs were in every home, the word was
that reading would soon be obsolete. Later when computers took over the world,
it was said books and newspapers would eventually disappear.
I don’t know what the future holds, but I will say people
are still reading and writing. Bookstores are full of people buying books and
meeting there to talk about books. Book clubs abound. Kindles and Nooks are
constant companions. Everywhere you look fingers are flying over keypads,
texting. Somebody reads all those texts.
These days some parents are so eager for their little
darlings to read that they begin reading to them in utero. After thousands of
hours reading to those babies and perhaps drilling them on phonics and sight
words, mothers proudly present a reading kindergartener.
Not so with my mother. She had the weird notion that reading
was best taught at school by teachers who knew what they were doing. When I
entered first grade, no kindergarten in those ancient days, I didn’t even know
my ABCs as my friend Kay did.
But Mama had prepared me well for school, not with reading
and writing, but with talking. She had talked to me about the world I lived
in. I could count money, tell time, and knew about everything I saw including
the whys and hows.
My introduction to reading and writing was the long name my
teacher, Miss Perry, taped on my desk, Emmogene
Downs, my name. It stretched
all the way across my desk, and I had to write that name. I’d had crayons for
years and drawn plenty of pictures, but I’d never written a thing.
Miss Perry placed a book, MAC AND MUFF, on my desk. On the first page was a picture of a Scottie,
and under it was MAC, the Scottie’s name. Then I met MUFF the cat and began to
read, “Mac and Muff. See Mac Run. See Muff run.”
Thus began my love affair with reading. We weren’t bothered
with the sounds of letters, just the words and their meanings. The sight of MAC
brought to mind a little, black Scottie.
Before long I was reading everything or at least picking out
words in the newspaper, on cereal boxes, and in the books I read to Mama. She
didn’t read to me, but she was a good listener.
I could hardly wait till Friday evenings when I could dig
into Grandpa’s bag for the four books he brought me from the library every
week. I was hooked on reading.
