As I drive up to a grove of pine trees on my Honda 350 four track, there are
three huge trees on each side. On the left side of me is one log that is down
on the ground on its side by the three trees. All the branches on the log have
broken off long ago over the years. I park the Honda in the middle of
the pine trees. I put the four wheeler in neutral and put the parking
brake on. I swing my leg over the back of the four wheeler and get off. There
is an oversized backpack on the back of the machine. It has everything I will
need for today's hike. I put on the backpack, which makes me seem a foot
taller.
When the bear gets about ten feet from me he stops dead in
his tracks and looks at me with his beady golden-brown eyes. He's
sizing me up. He doesn't blink and neither do I. I'm ready for the first blow.
I wonder if I can fight back but all I have is my hands and the ability to
think. The bear looks at me and realizes I'm not going to be easy prey. It
slowly turns and walks away, slowly, into the trees.
I stand there, pale and trembling, thinking to myself that
even though I'm the winner, I have gone through something even more terrifying
than this a thousand times before, if not a million.
That is my life very time I’m called on to read out loud to
a group of people or even one person. You see, I have never mastered reading.
The humiliation I feel when asked to read makes my encounter with the bear seem
like a piece of cake. I want to walk away, just like the bear did, but I can't.
I'm trapped. "I can't," I say. "I can't read
it."
So I stand there in the forest, thinking to myself, where
does a person like me stand in the twenty- first century. That hard work for a
laborer is not enough for a man who wants to get ahead in this life, where
everything you do requires reading and writing.
I think of what I have accomplished this year: I've repaired
five miles of fencing, which requires persistence and skill. I've replaced the
clutch in my truck, built a garage, repaired plumbing and electrical problems
for friends, neighbors and family, helped my son finish his basement, put a new
roof on my house and painted the interior, gone on hunting and fishing
expeditions, taken a couple of camping trips, been the head cook at family
reunions, and, as I have for the last twelve years, I've gone to my weekly
lessons in reading and writing.
"You're a good fixer, Mike," says my friend who is
a range rider, which means he inspects fences and herds cattle and oversees the
entire cattle range.
I've always had to be an apprentice because I couldn't read
or write. I've had to do the work and please someone else.
While other people can go home and read a book for work or
school or pleasure, I look at the pictures.
You have to be a specialist.
You're treading water but you're not swimming, in every
situation you encounter. All I can do is listen to what people say. People can
guide you to a certain point.
I went to fourteen years of school without being able to
read or write. I could have been a high school dropout for all the good it did
for me. Starting with first grade, I was so far behind I could never put
it all together. Now I'm playing catch-up.
At school, I would tell my math teacher I didn't understand
the procedure needed to solve a math problem. He said, "I knew you
couldn't read, because once I showed you how to do it, you could do it."
He would explain the steps to me. And I would understand.
I think back and I start looking at my teachers and I think
the only ones who really taught something were the math teachers because they
had to show you the formula. The others said, "read this, write it down,
hand it in."
I would listen in class and memorize as much as I could. I
would study the spelling words all week and do pretty well on the test, but a
week later they were gone. I knew history because I listened to the lessons,
and I understood them, but when it came to a test, I couldn't show what I
knew.
I was so far behind I could never put it all together.
I watch the show, Are You Smarter than a Fifth
Grader? There's so much you should know by the time you're a fifth grader.
I compare myself to those kids academically and I think I'm not even
close.
When you start to learn to read, they show you so much, you
work so hard, and it has to become automatic. I have brothers in law who are
great readers, yet they dropped out of high school. I've had to go in the back
door to accomplish what I have, but I have done it. I have learned to read. I
can read just about any book I choose to read, even long biographies and
history books.
I may be slower, like the turtle in the race, but I get to
the finish line and I remember what I have read.
I like to write and I have a lot of stories I want to tell,
but I have a hard time spelling the words I really want to say. I'm working on
this. Spellcheck is great, but you can still end up with the wrong word. So I
have to depend on others to fix what I write.
I look at what I have accomplished and I think I could have been
an expert at something by now if I had learned to read and write when I was a
child. I do look back with some satisfaction, even though these skills came
later in life.
I've heard that hell is like a dam in the river because you're stuck and you can't progress. You're held up and watching everybody else progress. You're seeing what everyone else is accomplishing and you can't do it. You're never swimming in the river. Never in the current.
In the end, I'm pretty satisfied with who I am and what I've
accomplished.
I'd like to be in the mainstream. I'd like to be in the big
river with everyone else.
Sooner or later an athlete has to fall back on something
else. They need a Plan B. They can live off the money they've earned or go into
broadcasting or get a real job, doing what they went to college for. They're
famous and they have connections and most of them can find a way to earn
a living after their athletic career is over. They can't depend on being an
athlete all their life. If you don't have the talent to do something else
you're stagnant.
It's like a pond that wants to get to the river but it can't
get into the main stream. It becomes a puddle and the grass and the flowers
grow and then you look up and you think there's a beautiful flower. If you
hadn't been that pond, the beauty of the meadow wouldn't be there. I have to
think of myself as the pond that didn't get to go where it wanted to go, but
found itself in a good place after all.
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