Teacher, May I Take A Nap?

Tim Harris has a funny and touching memoir posted at Apesma's Lament. While reading it, I suddenly had a vivid memory of the first week of elementary school:

The letters of the alphabet were posted all around the room, greatly enlarged so that our tiny brains could not escape the reason we had gathered here: We were going to learn to read.

It occurs to me now that this scene may have been the beginning of my impatience with my fellow humans. For, you see, I already knew how to read. One of my sisters was grown up, had two children of her own, and was living with us while her husband served with the Marines in Vietnam. She alleviated her loneliness and worry by teaching her son and myself to read and write, using anything available: billboard signs, matchbook covers, newspaper ads...

Of course, when I went to school, I thought everyone knew how to read. So when I was called on to take a stab at our first assignment, I did as I was asked to do: I did my best.

As I read the first page without stopping to "sound out" the words, a few heads turned--toward the teacher. I guess my classmates thought I was faking. The teacher's surprised expression showed them that I was not.

By the fourth or fifth page--I was breezing through it, now--all eyes were on me, and the teacher wisely interrupted and thanked me for my efforts. Then she asked a few more people to give it a try. Now, all these years later, I realize she must have had some butterfly-winged hope that she had been given an entire class of ready-to-go readers! But, of course, that was not the case.

After a few students stumbled through a syllable or two, the teacher thanked everyone, asked us to close our books, and began the laborious process of introducing us to each letter on the wall...

A...

B...

C...

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...