Letting Go of Words
Relearning a different language
I never read comic books as a child. Back then I thought that comic books were designed to help young boys who had great difficulty learning how to read. They were mostly all pictures with only a teeny tiny amount of words. It was like, Here are some pictures so you can understand what those few words mean.
While other boys my age were reading comic books I was reading adult books with lots and lots of words. I went to the library once a week and checked out the maximum amount of books allowed; ten. I read history books, lots of books about animals, books about explorers, biographies, philosophy books, books about exotic places around the world, and even fiction. While other boys were reading about super heroes and having muscles and being macho and fighting evil, I was reading to learn as much as I could (because school just did not provide enough of that for me).
By the time I was twelve years old my addiction to words was fully formed. It was worse than a heroin addiction. I was utterly helpless to do anything about it.
By that time I had also become a true snob; a word snob. My parents, my siblings, and all my friends vehemently refused to play Scrabble with me.
I finally got sidetracked a bit from my word addiction in my later teen years when I got…
