Wednesday, November 2, 2011

The: Matt's perspective

Just a few comments about Kelli's recollection of my battles with the word the:
  • I also remember Sun Up and could have recited the first page from memory as well.

I also recall the grammatical issue in the fourth sentence and have never quite understood why it was allowed to stand.

  • I tried to find an image of the cover of Sun Up online but was unsuccessful. I did, however, locate many academic papers which reference the book as one of the more popular of the basal readers of the 1970’s.

Apparently it lacked racial diversity and sucked in terms of providing children with quality reading material. It also appears to have been reprinted well into the 1980’s, with the characters of Bing and Sandy replaced by Buffy and Mack.

  • I also recall struggling to read the word the, and I struggled with it for quite a while (though in the mind of a kindergartner, that could have been a day or two). I can also distinctly remember the moment when I read it correctly for the first time.

A big moment in my then-brief existence.

  • I find it amazing that I was sent off to kindergarten unable to read a single word and was never read to as a child.

As a father, this fact becomes more incomprehensible by the day.

Honestly, what the hell was my mother doing?

  • It was good to learn from my sister that my mom would meet me at the bus stop and hold my hand as we walked up driveway. I have no memories of this, and I have very few memories of these mother-son moments from my childhood.

As we got older, the amount of parenting that we received declined sharply. These kindergarten moments with my mom may have represented a watershed for me in terms of parental involvement.

It’s a happy picture that my sister has painted for me.