how i learned to read

I suppose the better title for this post is WHY I learned to read. It's right there at the end of the video clip:

"Today, on The Electric Company, the Lady asks: 'Is it - myah-myayh?'"

And the answer is right there on the screen - in this case, a big, bold NUTTY - an answer out of reach for the illiterate.

I remember being young and watching and being completely frustrated that I could not read what it said right there in front of me. This was, if I remember correctly, a teaser that also closed each episode, so if you didn't read, you had to wait until the next show to learn the answer. Not being the patient sort, and (metaphorically) prone to head-banging when faced with riddles, I learned myself to read.

This is my earliest childhood memory, somewhere in my third year, sitting on the floor in the TV room, the back bedroom of our ranch house, anxious and befuddled and feeling decisively left out.

And, in the first installment of how I became a strong-willed, independent and free-thinking person of female persuasion (aka a Feminist), I offer you this oldie-but-goodie:



Full "Free to Be You and Me" disclosure: as a kid, I had the book and the record, gifts from my Mom, but only saw this video for the first time just a few months ago. My mother NEVER considered herself a feminist nor a democrat (for reasons beyond my understanding, she fancied Nixon as one of the great ones), and in general my parents then (and my father now) were apolitical, subscribing to the "why bother" camp because "they're all crooks." (Only recently did I learn that my parents NEVER voted. NEVER. My father says he *might* vote this year.)

Nonetheless, she (and he) instilled in me a can-do-anything attitude, and I never heard a no-can-do because I was a girl. She encouraged my independent streak and was both proud and frustrated when expression of that streak also meant independence from her. She often blamed the book. It all went back to the book, that damn "Free to Be."