Revenge of the Luddites — Part Two: In which a child learns to read

There is something to be said for indigenous cultures that never developed a written language.

When I was a child, my experience of reading began in the first grade. We would gather at a table and the teacher would put a picture book in front of us, and we would sound out the words that went with the pictures.

Before literacy, a child’s world of language is ephemeral. Words float through the air. They are fleeting and intangible. Conversations are like soap bubbles, shimmering for a moment before popping, then gone.

As a pre-verbal child, I grasped at meanings, piecing together fragments of speech, facial expressions, and tone of voice to make sense of the swirling verbal soup. It was probably how a young dog tries to parse what I am trying to say to it.

When I learned to read, suddenly words had permanence. They were anchored to the page, patient and waiting. If I was curious, I could return to them again and again, savoring each syllable, pondering each phrase. No longer at the mercy of fleeting sounds, books become a trustee of ideas. They were always there to go back to. They were a constant.