REALLY learning to read

So I stumbled through the first two years of attempting to memorize enough words to actually get through blockbusters like Dick and Jane (ugh).

Then one day when I was 7 or 8 I stayed home sick. I went into the center of the cavity for your legs in a huge rolltop desk we had in a spare room, pulled in blankets and pillows and then barricaded the front with sofa cushions.

I wanted to look at the old fashioned illustrations in a big musty book of historical heroes in my little fort where no one could bother me, so I even drug in a lamp and hooked it up.

Mainly I was looking at the pictures, especially one of the Inca Atlahualpa stretching as far as he could on tiptoes to show the Spaniards the level of the room he would pile with gold if they would release him. As I pored over the pictures I began to look at the text. Some of the words I could recognize, like 'see,' 'and,' 'the' (See Spot run. Run Spot run!). Then a strange thing happened - I could suddenly see the little words I could pronounce as parts of big words I had never seen before - words like 'Pizarro' and 'Atlahualpa' and 'massacre.' I spent most of the day puzzling through more and more of the story with more and more exctitement. For the first time I felt like I was actually reading, and for my own pleasure and enlightenment.

In one fell swoop, or so I remember it, I became a reader, and an historian.