Saturdays with Seniors: Jeannette Learns to Read
September 12, 2020 • 7 Comments • Posted in guest blog, memoir writingSharon Kramer’s guest post last week received so much positive attention that we’re going to stick with the “back to school” theme. The essay Sharon’s fellow writer Jeannette Williams wrote about struggling to read as a child comes with a glorious triumphant ending you won’t want to miss.
by Jeannette Williams
Ahh, reading. Was I ever read to? I don’t remember. My father was illiterate, and my mother worked from three p.m to 11 p.m. We never saw her after school.
Mother was never home when my daddy made us read to him. He could barely write his own name. Starting with the capital G, lower case e, o, r, then another capital G, then ending with lower case e. GeorGe. He signed his last name in all capital letters: B, R, O, W, N.BROWN.
So yes, he could manage to spell his name, but that didn’t save us from his idea of us reading the mail to him. We had to read it to him before we could go out and play.
Maybe he thought he was giving us reading lessons? I don’t know.
We got mail from L. Fish Furniture, Sears, and sometimes from our next door neighbors: George and Bertie Moore. He’d start with my sister Judy, since she was the oldest. She was only in the sixth grade, and when she ran across a big word like “manufacture” or something, she’d pause.
“What’s the matter?” he’d scream.
“Don’t know,” she’d say.
“Why?”
“Just, don’t know.”
“Oh,” he’d shout. “Go and sit on the couch. No outside for you. And you better not cry.”
Then he’d call Jerry. He was younger than my sister but older than me. Daddy would give him the same letter my sister tried to read. Just like my sister, he’d get stuck at the same word. But Jerry would stutter and cry.
“Dummy,” Daddy would say. “Go sit by your sister.”
When it was my turn, I’d run kicking and screaming from the room and hide under the bed. Did this make me a better reader? No. It only made me afraid to pick up a book.
But somehow I managed to succeed
In spite of my father’s reading lessons, I managed to become a Licensed Practical Nurse, and then a Registered Professional Nurse. I read everything I could get my hands on — and then some more!
I may not have been able to read in childhood, but I made up for it in adulthood.