Heather: How I Learned to Read Before I Could Talk

It took me 13 years before my teeth, tongue, and throat could work together and speak in intelligent words and sentences in a consistent manner. This was especially true if any emotion was involved, and my words got mixed up in mumbled flurries of frustration. It led to constant belittling and teasing by my peers. In a world where "normal and everything in working order" is where you fit in, I often turned towards books as my friends.

The first book I learned to read was Walt Disney's Cinderella in 1978. I was four years old. I taught myself. I was barely saying a few words, and could only lipread a few words. Reading books is the only place that made sense to me. The best way I can describe how I was able to do this is that one sense was missing, so my other four senses took over and got stronger.

My favorite book to read over and over every single day was The Rand McNally Book of Favorite Animal Stories. I got it for Christmas in 1980 when I was 6 years old in 1st grade attending a deaf class in Provo. I already learned how to read before going to kindergarten, but it was mostly from the same Cinderella book as there was only a few books on the shelf at the time. Sometimes I would leaf through encyclopedias that my mom had just to look at the words.  I learned a lot about words, vocabulary, sentence formation, and how people would speak to one another through this RMB Animal Stories book. I remember that reading wasn't promoted in my deaf class, we didn't have story time, or reading time, or even reading groups. They were too busy helping us learn to talk and work in a classroom environment, and learn to follow the instructions or rather the ineffectively shouted commands from the teachers. There was no sign language available as Utah promoted "speaking and lipreading only for the deaf" kind of environment back in the 70's and 80's.

A couple years ago when I was visiting family in Utah in 2009, I was poking around my Dad's garage. There was a shelf filled with old books, Bell jars and even a briefcase I recognized from the 1970's. The more I poked around, the more I thought about the book I got in 1980 when I was 6 years old. I got excited and hoped I would be able to find that book. To my surprise, I did find it under several old books covered with dust and cobwebs:

The book was missing its red front and back cover and half the book was torn away. I lovingly went through each dog eared page and remembered all the lovely stories with the beautiful and colorful drawings. My favorite story was the Mailman From Bayberry Lane. I brought it home with me and showed it to my kids and talked about my experiences from this book.

Fast forward 2 years later and I found the original book in near mint condition at Goodwill! I was SO excited and snatched it right up. Now I was able to read all the stories about the animals that were my friends when I was so little in such a confusing world:

My children are already too old for this book. I plan to read it to my grandchildren. Every now and then I take out this book just to look at the lovely drawing of my animal friends and read a story or two. Every single story in this book had a wonderful moral and I remember as a kid trying to apply it often to my own life. In fact I can still draw life long lessons from these stories. The good news is that I can speak pretty well now and it won't be such a burden to talk aloud about these amazing animals in these wonderful stories.

Here is a 1980 Christmas picture of me with my favorite book:

Here is me at age 2 looking at the children's encyclopedias from the shelf of books at left of the picture, I would sit and read on my kitchen bumper seat all the time: 

Here is me at age 3 taking a nap with my favorite blanket after looking at the Mr Men books by Richard Hargreaves: 

What was your favorite story as a child?