He had kept the humiliating secret most of his life. Finally he had to stop pretending.
Its is
nearing dusk . The man is sitting in the dining -room of Mrs Patricia
Lord in Illinois , bending over a list of words.
“Try
these no,” Mrs Lord says.
He
looks at the top word on the list. “Is,” the man says.
“Yes,”
Mrs Lord says.
The
next word on the list is brown. The man looks at it for a
moment. Then he says, “Brown.”
“Yes,”
Mrs Lord says.
The
next word is sleep. The man hesitates. Seconds pass. He is
having trouble with this one.
Finally
he says, “play?”
“No.”
The
man stares. “I don't know what it is.”
“All
right,” Mrs Lord says softly. “Come back to it later.”
The
man is 55 years old. He is a large man, balding. He is in work
clothes- denim overalls flannel shirt. His hands are dirty from his labor. He drove here straight from a construction site where he works
as a plumber.
The
next word on the list is down . “Down,” the man says with
confidence in his voice.
“That's
right,” Mrs Lord says
“Very
good.”
The
man never learnt to read as a child. His mother was sick and his
father was an alcoholic; the boy did not do well in school, and at
the age of 12 he dropped out and began to work. Sometimes his mother
would try to teach him something; his father, if he had been
drinking,would say, “What the hell are you bothering to teach him
for? He don't know Nothing.”
The
man went through most of his life hiding his secret. He learnt to be
a plumber; he married and started family. He concealed his inability
to read even from his wife and children; his wife did all the paper
work around the house, read the mail, handled the correspondence.
Then
the man lost a job because he could not read. His company required
each employee to take a written test about safety procedures. The man knew the rules, but could not read the questions.
Out
of work, he felt panic. He enrolled in night-time course but soon
realized that it was meant for people who at least knew the basics.
He
bought a book called Reading fun , designed for preschool aged children. He looked at the pictures of ambulances and
taxis and trucks, followed by the word for each, and tried to teach
himself.
He
couldn't
Finally,
he sat down with his wife. “ You know when I lost my job? “ he
said. And he told her he couldn't read. He had wondered how she would
react to his secret “I'll help in any way I can,” she said.
Several
months later, from television, he heard about private tutoring
offered by the Literacy Volunteers of Chicago. He called.
PATRICIA
LORD. Remembers the first time he showed up at her door. “He was
such a nice man. But it soon became clear- he didn't even know the
alphabet.”
Twice
a week they worked together. “He was so grateful,” Mrs Lord
said.” She taught him the alphabet. She taught him how to print
letters. She taught him the first words other than his own name that
he had never known how to read or write.
Since
then, the man has found a new job. He keeps his reading cards in his
truck and works on them during rest periods.His employers do not know
that he can not read; he is deathly afraid that they will find out
and that he will be discharged again.
It
was losing the other job that convinced him he had to learn how to
read. That , and something else.
“I've
got little granddaughter,” he said. “I never want her to come to
me and say, ' Grandpa, read this,' and I can't do it. I already went
throgh life not being able to read to my own children. I want to be
able to read to my granddaughter.”
He is
proud of how far he has come in life. “I can take a blueprint and
figure out how a whole building works,” he said. “I built my own
house. I think that's a very good accomplishment fir a man who can't
read.
“still,
I've had to pretend , all my life In a restaurant, I'd pretend to
read the menu. But I didn't understand a word. I'd always ask the waitress what the specials were and choose one of them. I just did my
best to keep it a secret.
“I've
never written a letter in my life. When the holidays came, it was
very hard for me to pick out a card for my wife. I'd look at the
card, but I'd have no idea what they say. So I'd buy her a flower
instead.”
now
he dreams that before long he can really read something. “It
doesn't have to be a lot. Mrs Lord tells me that once you start, it
gets easier all the time.
“I
get disgusted with myself if I have a bad day and miss a lot of
words. But when there's been a good day I'll feel great. I'll go home
and tell my wife, 'I learnt this word.' or I'll say,”Teacher says I
have good handwriting.' And then my wife and I will work on the
spelling cards.”
It is
getting dark outside. The man has been up since before dawn. At the
dining-room table., Mrs Lord is helping him write a sentence. “Let's
try 'The cow is brown,'” she says. “First word,the.”
The
man checks his list of words. Then he writes: The.
“Good,”
Mrs Lord says. “Next word,cow.”
He
checks his list and writes the word.
“Very
good. Now is”
That
word he knows easily.
“Now
brown.”
He
thinks for a second , then writes brown at the end of the sentence he
has built.
“Right!”
Mrs Lord says. “ End of sentence!”
The
man look up. Something close to pride is in his eyes.
“I
can't wait until I can write a letter,” he says. “The first is
going to be to my wife. I'm going to tell her how much I love her.”
On
the cover of a magazine I write for is a slogan: “Man at his best.”
Once in a while , when you really aren't expecting it, you find out
what that means.
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