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I don’t actually remember learning to read.  The first book I ever “read,” was The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss, and I think my “reading” could probably be more accurately described as memorization.  I’m sure, like many kids, I delighted in the way the lines rhymed, in the predictable opposition of ‘left’ and ‘right,’ ‘day’ and ‘night.’  I had coerced my moms into reading this book to me so many times, that I eagerly anticipated the turn of each page.  One night, I boastfully announced that I  was going to read the book to my moms, rather than the other way around.  They were intrigued, and allowed me to direct the bedtime story myself.  My mom claims that I had all the theatrical flourishes down pat.  I pointed to the pictures that illustrated the words I was reading, turned the page when I’d exhausted the printed text, and maintained a convincing cadence.  My moms have told me this story of my perfect recitation more than once.  I don’t have my own memory of this episode, but I can imagine myself as my parents describe me.  

I’ve tried to go from this image to my own first memory of learning to read.  I know there must have been a period of time in which I struggled to sound words out, or miscalculated the way the vowels represented by the letters ‘e’ and ‘i’ might sound in written succession, but I just don’t remember my own literary progression.  As far as my memory extends though, I do remember loving books.  In particular I remember loving the way words sounded when read aloud.  Poetry was especially appealing to me.  Apparently, as a five year old, I was so pleased with my own ability to reproduce the rhythms of poetry by reading the words aloud, that I entered myself in a talent show at my family’s church.  I read Something Big has Been Here by Jack Prelutsky.  It goes like this:

Something big has been here,

what it was, I do not know,

for I did not see it coming,

and I did not see it go,

but I hope I never meet it,

if I do, I’m in a fix,

for it left behind its footprints,

they are size nine-fifty-six.

Some of the other folks at the talent show didn’t think reading  was a legitimate talent.  They tried to take my book from me, insisting that I wouldn’t need it to recite the poem.  With an insistence perhaps borne out of the innocence of limited experience, I stood my ground.  I wanted to showcase my skill as a reader, and as far as I remember, that’s exactly what I did.