Literacy

I was enjoying looking at some of Leo's amazing images over at Away With Words and also did some exploring on você é o que você ouve.

I love the pictures, the owl in particular. But I kept getting frustrated by the fact that I couldn't understand what the words said since I neither speak nor read Spanish. Several times I've been determined to learn the language, but alas all the tape programs and community center classes I've attempted have been to no avail since I seldom have an opportunity to actually use it, so I've not managed to develop any mastery. I can cuss and count, ask where the bathroom is and how to get to a hotel, but that's about it. (When I was 15 I had a boyfriend who told me he would teach me to swear in Spanish and kiss in French so I would be multi-lingual...did a pretty good job of both, but that's another topic entirely.)

As I was kicking myself yet again for not developing the fluency I long for, it occurred to me as I strained over each word that THIS is what illiteracy must feel like: to look at printed words, hungering to decipher their meaning, struggling to infer some context from the pictures and the little bit I could figure out - but ultimately feeling lost, confused, frustrated, and ashamed by my ignorance.

I've read plenty of statistics about illiteracy before and been concerned about the issue, but FEELING what it must be like to be unable to read really knocked me in my gut.

I've been an omnivorousous reader since I was a very small child. As years went on, whenever the chaos of my crazy homelife got to be too much (which was often), I'd grab a good book and head for the tops of the giant mulberry tree in our backyard where I could get lost for hours in books like Misty Of Chincoteague, biographies of Madame Currie and Jonas Salk, and my very first forays into the amazing world of science fiction.

Books were my best friends and my salvation in what seemed to be a very fractured, frightening world. To NOT be able to read would be worse than amputation, in my mind. It would be losing a part of me that is so integral to my being that I would become unrecognizable to myself.

When I was 22 I read the Thornbirds. In that book there is a scene where the main character gets headlice and must deal with it. ICK! But a couple years later when my young toddler son came home from daycare with headlice, the only thing that got me throught the disgust and sense of shame about "my baby having bugs" was to recall that passage from that book.

At other times other books gave me courage to meet other challenges. They also amused me, informed me, inspired me and more.

Reading opened up windows to the world for me, introducing me to people, place, ideas, information and concepts that I otherwise never would have known in my small repressive town.

I am so deeply grateful for the opportunities for education that I have had, recognizing that in much of the world girls and women are not considered worthy of learning.

And I may just give another crack at trying to learn Spanish. It's a beautiful language and would definitely be helpful for some of the travel I'm planning to do.

So thanks, Leo, for the spark of inspiration. And keep up taking those great shots!