reading | My Reality Show

Have you had to assemble anything lately – something that came with instructions? Did you notice that the instructions only come with pictures and a few names of the items that are inside the box? I find that not having words in the instructions to be confusing. If I can’t figure out the pictures, I end up watching a tutorial on YouTube. I’m glad there’s YouTube, but really, why can’t they include some words on the instructions to help us assemble our project?

Our lives would be so different, if we didn’t know how to read. The majority of my days are spent reading and writing at my job, and when I’m done with that, I pull out a book or my cell phone and read things from there. Plus, it’s the things you don’t think about every day that we’re reading that are so helpful. I’m glad to be able to read signs, recipes, patterns and so many other things.

Dad said he taught all of us kids how to read, and I want to thank Dad and my teachers for helping me. Statistics vary on what the literacy rate is because there are so many different factors to consider, but one site said one in 10 people in the world do not know how to read. When I was small, I needed extra help with reading, and I’m grateful I got that help.

Summer school was fun when I went the summer after first grade. I vaguely remember that there were about 12 of us. Besides working on our reading, we made time for playing, which is the part I remember best. Our summer teacher was our wonderful music teacher. Back then, we read the look-say readers Dick and Jane which used the whole word method of reading. Phonics hadn’t been introduced to us yet.

When my class got to second grade, we started getting the book order forms from Scholastic. There were so many books to choose from the colorful thin paper forms. When our paperback book orders arrived, it was such an exciting day. The books were bound together with a rubber band with our book orders on top. That’s when I learned that books are magical and can carry us off to different times and places to meet extraordinary or not so extraordinary people. The reader knows they read a good one when they get to the last chapter and feel sad that the story is coming to an end. It can be like saying good-bye to a good friend that you’re not going to see any more.

Pictures might speak a thousand words, but wanting to read the fun books helped us to learn how to read the other books. That helped us to read everything else, and that’s worth a lot!

The worth of a book is to be measured by what
you can carry away from it. ~James Bryce

Samantha turned the pages pretty rapidly and only got stuck on a couple of words. She sounded the tricky ones out just fine, and I only had to help a little. As she pulled one book out of her blue knapsack while putting away the other, she looked at me through the corner of her eye, and her mouth bent into a smile.

When she got to the last poem in one of the books, I didn’t think that the poem she read to me would be in a current book. The poem was written just as I remembered it, and Samantha read it perfectly. The only thing that was different about it was that it was called The Rainbow Poem.

Listening to those words brought me back to the days when Dad played albums every Sunday. The Peggy Lee album was one of his favorites. My favorite song on that album was Sing a Rainbow. I bent over the phonograph, my belly feeling the pinch as I stretched. I always counted the grooves and found the spot where I should lower the arm. The needle almost always fell right in place. Peggy Lee’s voice would surround the room as she happily sang the colors of the rainbow. Once the song was over, I placed that needle right back to the beginning again. My parents didn’t seem to mind hearing that song over and over again or listening to me sing along.

That tune stuck in my head over the years. As I rocked each one of my babies, I sang that song to them, over and over again. Even though they are not babies any more, I bet each one of them knows Sing a Rainbow by heart.

I didn’t think to tell Samantha that I knew that poem as she named the colors to me one by one. Maybe I will see her again the next time I volunteer at her school. It’s nice to know this favorite tune is still playing in other places instead of just inside of my head!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=TxsHzfpjbHw