Saturday, August 27, 2016

Far, Far Away

Yes, I was a bookworm.  As a child, I read constantly, and rode my bike for miles to get a fresh stack from the library every week.  It was easy for me to memorize things, so I was thrilled when I got a set of encyclopedias, the ones you got from the grocery store for buying things and filling up books of stamps.  

I began to memorize it right away.  The result of this surprised me.  People began to view me as being a problem.  I had too much energy, too many questions...I made up stories!

In fifth grade, I had read every book in the children's section, and had to be allowed to go upstairs where the main library was.  I was surely the odd one, there.  Not allowed to go into the certain section not considered suitable for my age group!  I didn't caer about that.  I wante dmore pictures of far away places, more facts about language.
Bigger and heavier, the books were far more absorbing, making me think.  I wanted that.

I was the one who you could yell right at and I wouldn't even look up, since I didn't hear you.  Lost in the world of books, I kept my secrets.  I didn't have to tell anyone what I was thinking or feeling.  In fact, I didn't even have to feel it myself.  I lived through stories, and then through facts.  I carried the huge dictionary I had been given to school, and spent my lunch hours studying to win the spelling bee.  It wasn't easy, since I had a rival who was as driven as I was.  We went head to head every week.
"Mississippi", "Antidisestablishmentarianism"...one false step and it was all over. 

It was comforting to dive into the sea of words, look up their origins, put them together, take them apart.  They came from other languages that went before, other ways of thinking, other civilizations...time to read some history!

I was the really odd bird who thought that diagramming sentences was fun.  Words, what a great world...far from where most of the people lived.

Words became my trusted refuge...It was part of the journey that took me through a truly tormented time, as I found that language gave me a refuge from the harsh events of my daily life.  I kept that love alive, even through wrapping it in silence.  In short, I earned to clam up!  

For me, it was a time when expressing myself could be dangerous.  My home life was filled with unpredictable violence and abuse, and there were very good reasons to keep silent.  Besides that, there were some bullies in the area, and I was one of their targets.  Sometimes just getting to and from school was enough!

I still kept learning everything I could about language.  It turned out I was good at learning foreign languages, too, so I got enrolled in the first pilot program for American students to learn Russian during the 1960s.  After we moved to a different state, I took some French, then later Spanish, and German.  As an adult, I learned to speak Indonesian.  Language is the portrait of the soul.  Each language is a unique expression of the culture and the people who formed it, who use it.

I have a collection of tiny dictionaries and phrase books that could take me to many countries, with a basic knowledge of how to speak.   I could indeed go far, far away (Not likely to get as far as Saturn, though) and still understand and make myself understood.

Yes, fascinating is the word.  I hid in it.  Now I am coming out to speak and write it.   It's time to get the message out. 

And I want to help you do that, too.  




 

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