The wonder of reading

The wonder of reading

Aug. 21, 2001

It's The Pitts
By Lee Pitts

We are gradually saying good-bye to a generation of people who had their lives and educations interrupted by work, wars and responsibilities hard for us to contemplate. These people are living reminders that illiteracy is not always a sign of stupidity. Oh, I know, look up the word "illiterate" in the dictionary and it will say things like "ignorant"and "empty-headed," but it’s not always the people who cannot read who are ignorant, but the ones who can read and don’t surely are.

It’s hard to imagine that some people in this technically advanced world of ours can’t read the sports page, Steinbeck or Bombeck. How sad they’ve never curled up in the company of a good book. To write you must read and these folks will never know the satisfaction of scribbling their random thoughts, nor can they tap the wisdom of the ages recorded in books.

The unlettered have to make up for their shortcoming in other ways. They can’t read the handwriting on the wall or the directions on the package so they figure things out for themselves. Like the inventor who couldn’t fill out the patent applications on his many complicated inventions. Or the housewife with the unfailing memory who couldn’t write a note to herself so she had to memorize the shopping list.

There is another trait the illiterate seem to share: They go to great lengths to hide their impairment. Like the dairyman who always wore a wrist watch and carried a ball point pen in his shirt pocket, even though they were as worthless to him as yesterday’s newspaper — which he couldn’t read either. When asked what time it was, he’d point to his watch and say, "See for yourself." When queried as to how many cows he was milking he’d answer, "Too many to count" — which for him was true.

The untutored are reluctant to put their weakness on display for all to see. They will stare at a newspaper if only to look at the pictures or struggle over a contract as if they can read the fine print. They’ll scribble their "signature" like a doctor writing a prescription. We accept the doctor’s excuse: of 21 years scrawling notes in school, but to the illiterate we extend no such understanding.

Some of the unlettered make jokes about the many "advantages of illiteracy" to hide their humiliation. Like the successful businessman who was not a man of letters but of numbers. He could add figures in his head nearly as fast as a calculator and could read people like a book. Too bad he couldn’t write one. He rationalized, "I don’t need to read what a bunch of over-educated fortune tellers have to say. They’ve all read so much they’ve gotten stupid." That may be true, but we are all diminished when books are left unread and stories untold.

I don’t believe them when they claim their lives are less complicated. Certainly that’s not the case of the fisherman who liked to tie flies but refused to go to the optometrist when his eyesight got fuzzy. He didn’t want to admit he didn’t know the letters on the eye chart so he bought his "reading glasses" off the shelf and struggled with his flies Maybe he never wasted time reading trashy novels or took pen in hand to write bad poetry but he also missed one of the greatest joys in life: reading.

I met a man not too long ago who inspired this little essay. He was one of those who went to work at an early age and then off to the Army to fight for his country. At an advanced age he is now learning to read. "Why now?" I wondered aloud.

The old man replied, "I saw a blind man reading a book in Braille and I could see on his face the great pleasure it brought him. I realized that blind man had seen much more of the world than I had."

Now every time I open a good book, read the newspaper or write a letter to a friend I am reminded to thank Dick, Jane, Spot and the teacher who taught me to read.