Lou Reed’s Nephew on Literacy

“You know what’s a scam?” Lou Reed’s nephew looked up from a magazine, across the cubicle aisle from me at the William Holmes McGuffey Memorial Co-Working Wing.

“QR codes?” I guessed. “Haptic feedback?” I guessed again before he had a chance to respond.

“No,” he said. “Literacy.”

“A provocative choice. You are against reading?”

“Reading is fine,” he replied calmly. “It’s literacy I’m talking about.”

“You’ll have to explain.”

“Everywhere you look, there are agencies and charities spending millions, trying to expand this literacy.”

“Your point being?”

“My point being that you don’t see do-gooders spending millions teaching people how to watch DVDs or play videogames.”

“Or download QR codes.”

“Or download QR codes. Exactly. If the government made it its mission to stamp out ignorance of QR codes, that would be an outrage. Am I right? Let the QR code makers do that, if they can. Yet spending tax payer money to expand the user base of these … these word cartels is treated like some primeval virtue.”

“You’re just angry that texting lessons aren’t covered by insurance, aren’t you?”

Lou Reed’s nephew was getting flustered.

“It’s protectionism,” he sputtered. “Plain and simple.”

“So you think the word thugs have had it too easy for too long?”

“Yes. They should have to compete, like the rest of us.”

“Like the farmers, you mean.”

“Yes. Like the farmers.”