Hooked on Phonics

It rained yesterday and melted some of the snow in Virginia away. An entire world was revealed to me once the snow was gone. Before everything looked the same – white. Now I can see the houses and it makes driving around much more enjoyable. It’s not as cold as I feared it would be either. Overall, a great turn of events for this vacation.

Christmas with the Trone’s was fun – I missed being at home with my family (2 years in a row now I’ve been away!) but I did get some yummy and nice presents and ate some good food.

The best news is that this trip has afforded me lots of time to read – I finished one 270 page book already and just started another this morning. Both are by Tom Robbins and I like them a lot. Woohoo for reading. It’s been over a year since I finished an entire book and it feels good to be back in the swing of reading again. I hope I keep it up when we get back to Austin and have been thinking about how to stick to that resolution of sorts all week.

Considering these thoughts, we had an oddly appropriate conversation after dinner on Christmas discussing how we all learned to read. Was it phonics or simply a visual memory of words? Oddly enough not many of us could even recall how we learned to read (actually only one claimed that they did remember). I just found it funny because I know that most people in the conversation are avid readers and yet I don’t think many of us had ever stopped to think about how we learned this magical talent. I remember how I learned to ride a bike but not read. Such an odd thought to me. Anyway, I’m pretty sure it was phonics and the entire conversation started over one of those pens that kids have now that read the words for them. The idea is that they hear and see the word and will remember it the next time they see it?

Honestly, I’m skeptical. Sound it out, junior. Kkkkkk-aaaaaaa-tttttt – CAT!

There were a lot of great passages in the last book I read but this is my favorite. It’s from Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins:

“Who knows how to make love stay?
1. Tell love you are going to Junior’s Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half. It will stay.
2. Tell love you want a memento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a mustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay.
3. Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning.”

That’s all for now. Nighty night.