Almost all 21st century American communities have some sort of Adult Literacy Program (ALP), and if you are feeling a little isolated from your fellow man, I highly recommend signing up for one. I took the step last summer, when a particularly vicious bout of ennui and insignificance had captured my soul. It was one of the best choices I have ever made!
'Now, Blaine,' you're thinking, 'you already know how to read!' Of course, you know that and I know that, but the ALP did not know that, and I figured what they didn't know wouldn't hurt them. In fact, as you will see, I believe that my little deception did everyone some good that summer.
I was lucky in that my teacher was not some dried-up old prune or an ex-military drill sergeant type. Rather, she was a particularly pretty girl of 23, a volunteer fresh out of college. We met on a park bench in the playground of the local Methodist church. She was an angel, of course; her eyes were almond, her skin perfect, and her wavy dark-brown hair lightly touched her bare brown shoulders in a way that made me shiver. Her intentions were so pure that I almost repented my original fib immediately. That would have been lunacy, no doubt, but she had a goodness that made one want to confess things.
I explained that I had been able to graduate high school, despite my illiteracy, through the exploitation of books-on-tape and a mastery of one simple question: "I'm not quite sure what this is saying." I did not mention my undergraduate studies or my law degree. She was impressed, I could tell, by my well-spokeness. Not many of the people she encounters properly conjugate their verbs, I'd wager.
The course of study she employed was simple phonics, which is harder than you might think, when one already knows how to read quite well. Connecting patterns of all too-familiar letters with their sounds is oddly foreign when looked at that way, and I did find having to break easy words down into clusters to be maddeningly slow going. I stumbled enough to be convincing, yet more than which I was comfortable.
Still, I was a phenomenonly fast learner and my teacher was impressed. Together, we spent many happy afternoons zipping through the lessons she had prepared, leaving more than enough time for me to politely ask her out for a drink, which she often politley accepted. It was then, in the cool air-conditioning of dimly lit taverns, she would loosen up and heap praise upon me. Is there anything finer than to be validated and flattered by a beautiful young woman? Flush with pleasure and stout, I would demur, of course, all the time plotting the means to casually lay a hand on her knee or shoulder or elbow, all the time telling her that "if I was learning at a rapid rate, there could be no other explanation than I had the finest teacher in all of Virginia, perhaps the country - and the prettiest." I would always slip that in.
By August, I was reading full-on chapter books at a middle school level. My teacher and I would have drinks and discuss The Wizard of Earthsea or The Red Pony. Finally, I confessed that I didn't think I needed her, as a teacher, any longer. She tearfully agreed, and added how proud she was of me and of my stunning progress as a reader. She believed that I must have been raised by my parents in a truly criminal fashion, to have had such intelligence squandered for so long. I told her that I didn't want to play the 'blame game,' and that I was sure that my parents did the best they could. At this sentiment, she sobbed and fell into my arms. Before either of us knew what was happening, we were kissing. Her tears were on my cheeks, her lips on my lips, her hand on my neck. I had never been happier.
We decided to start seeing one another and are deeply in love to this day. Of course, I had to sell all of my books, lest she figure out my original deception. But that particular pain is very modest compared to the pleasures of true love. And no less than that is what I have found, true love, at the Adult Literacy Program. So do yourselves a favor this summer, go out and sign up. You won't regret it.
