Current Events > CE, when did you learn how to read/what are your earliest memories of reading?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I actually don't really have any memories prior to me being able to read (I was about 3 when I started reading), so it's always an interesting question to ask other people. :)
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I remember writing down the alphabet in kindergarten dozens of times. I don't remember the specifics of memorizing the different sounds but by first grade I was in the pink group, which was the smart kids group. We had to read a whole book one day. I think it was an abridged version of Black Beauty. I barely finished it on time and felt really stupid because some of the other kids in the group finished it before me. To be honest I've never really gotten over that.
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I don't remember not being able to read.

I have a lot of stories about kids who couldn't read or couldn't read well when I was a kid, and while I remember thinking they were stupid as hell, it was probably more just that their parents didn't or couldn't or didn't have time to teach them as much as mine did, and couldn't afford preschool and all that kind of stuff. Which is actually kind of sad in retrospect.

But when I was in kindergarten/1st grade, nothing irritated me more than how the teacher would call on a kid to read and like half the kids in the class would go:

The.... Dog.... Went.... Down.... The.... Street...

I do have one funny reading fail story about myself though, from 4th grade.

There was a line break in something I was reading about fighter planes in the world wars that for some reason I kept going back to the line I was on instead of the next line, so it was like:

"The US had new airplanes that were equipped with machine guns and bombs. They were also equipped with machine guns and bombs. They were also equipped with... machine guns and... bombs?"

Some other kid: "Hey DevsBro, were they equipped with machine guns and bombs?"

The line break from "they were also" back around to "equipped with" flowed so naturally that I didn't even notice the first time, lol.
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I read the shit out of all the Sesame Street golden books, Curious George and Clifford the Big Red Doge. I literally chose reading those books over playing with my friends. I pretty much read nonstop through my whole childhood. The school librarian let me take a bunch of books they were throwing out at the end of the school year and I finished them all in short order. It got to a point where I started reading my sisters' girly teen books because I had already finished everything else. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret and so on. I had a mail-in book club membership and begged my mom to just keep buying more. Eventually she bought an encyclopedia, which I read almost daily. I was a pretty nerdy kid I guess.

I've kind of lost interest in fiction but still read other stuff now and then. I miss it but it's harder to connect when there are other real life issues on my mind.
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DevsBro posted...

I don't remember not being able to read.

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My mother claims that I started reading out loud shortly after my first birthday. I can't remember not being able to read. My earliest memory of reading was after my sister was born, I read her books. I was just over two years old at that point.
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I remember reading "everybody poops except beautiful women"
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I remember thinking I wasnt able to read because I only memorized what specific words looked like and got by with the letter combinations I knew.

Then I realized I was just too lazy to sound out more than two letters.
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I remember everyone else not being able to read. That's about it. I know I would read some kid books with my grandma before I started school.
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The Dumb Bunnies books around 4 or 5..

My sister who was two years older read later than me. Once she started reading she kept it up..unlike myself <_<.
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yeah I started reading from a very young age and dont remember not being able to read.

in kindergarten I was way ahead of all the other kids. I was reading Infinte Jest my first day
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4, I'm pretty sure.

I feel like kids now are behind when we were all kids. My own daughter is 4 and shes just now learning to write her name. She knows the alphabet but most of the kids around her age, including her, cant read yet.

I think having my Mom pretty much constantly reading to me and practicing letter with me helped me learn at a young age.
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3 some Aladdin book.
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Ta-ta-today Junior.
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I don't know i knew how to read since i was born
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I was in pre-school class and remember trying to read stuff but didn't understand it so I made up the story in my own head.
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I remember reading these books that had little pictures in place of the word and then in parenthesis it spelled the word. I loved reading those as a kid. Helped a lot. That's about all I remember, though.
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