Why Can’t We Shut Up and Just Read?

Yesterday I was at Barnes & Noble, and I saw a young couple sitting in the café section, reading a book to their two young kids. Neither child was school age, but they sat there and listened attentively as Mommy and Daddy read each page and showed them the pics.

I couldn’t get over how pleased I was to see these two adults sharing a reading experience with their two kids. It brought back a memory of when I was six years old, and my mother took me to the neighborhood library to get my first library card. In order to have a card issued to me, I had to sign my first name, and I actually remember slowly printing out M-I-C-H and the other three letters with my mother, then 29 years old, smiling and nodding her head.

There’s a reason why I have always felt comfortable dealing with the written word, first as a reader, then as a writer, and then both reading and writing every day for the last 73 years. And the reason is because I was taught how to read, which in those days was the only way to communicate with anyone other than by using my mouth.

I’m talking about 1950. We didn’t have a TV. We listened to the radio, but what came over the radio were words that were spoken by someone else. It goes without saying that there was no internet, and when we did get our first home television in 1953 or 1954, we could see what the people on the TV…