On Learning How To Read: The Hen Who Could Bake

I badly wanted to read the book on the shelf. It contained the story of a hen who wanted to bake. I had seen the illustration. She was covered in flour and standing in a bowl. I could only guess that she wanted to bake.I could not read. I was six and I thought everyone was ever-yon. If I ever got through one sentence, chances are I did not understand it.

I felt like the odd girl in my first grade class; looking at my classmates across the table who were confidently reading the story of the hen, standing to return the book on the shelf, getting another. I cannot remember exactly the time I started learning how to read. My father bought me some children’s tapes which saved my life. The woman in the tapes had such perfect diction and accent, I listened to her all day on weekends, even mimicked her and the sounds made by an airplane and the baby. The pages of the guide book quickly got dog-eared. By the time I was seven, I already knew the “fisherman catches fish,” and Wednesday was not Wed-nes-day anymore.

When I was not jumping into ditches or bathing in the rain, I was on my stomach on our wooden floor with a broadsheet spread in front of me, memorizing names and faces like senators or people who topped the accounting board examination. That was when I was not drooling over the chocolate cake in my mother’s black-and-white recipe book. I had a different purpose for my father’s book on the wonders of water. I browsed its pictures for familiar faces. For instance, the boy rinsing his mouth looked like my cousin Joel or the woman drinking water resembled our neighbor. I would roll on the floor, laughing. If the hen could really bake, she would not be covered in flour.