Dear Readers,
Let's all be 5 again. Just think of everything we could accomplish!
In Chapter Two: Language Wars
... My attraction to languages and their respective cultures stems from both the early love of my father and also from his strange sub-culture. When I was five, I remember the excitement of learning to read. I knew it was a doorway into a much bigger world outside our little house in Wyoming. Only days or weeks after learning to read, I wandered into my father’s office where books stood, wall to wall, floor to ceiling, and lay scattered across his messy desk. I climbed onto his big oak swivel chair to reach the top of his desk. My father always had open books, at least three, in his work space, besides all the papers and closed books circling the writing pad. I pulled the first book closer. Shock, disappointment and excitement all flooded my insides at once, as I stared at a completely different and unreadable alphabet. That ancient Greek book was next to an ancient Hebrew text and next to an English book with the familiar alphabet but few words I could understand. I found more funny words or lettering in Latin and old German Script books, all lying in front of me. For a split second, I felt like I was drowning in an ocean, but with the confidence of a five-year-old, I decided to learn how to read them all.
No comments:
Post a Comment