The first word I remember being shocked at reading
was the word the.
I couldn’t stop staring at it.
The
It was, of course, a word I had heard often
as a baby, toddler, right up to kindergarten.
But to see Mrs. Huddlemeyer write the on the blackboard, well…
those three letters together didn’t even look like
they should make the sound of the.
I tried to sound out the letters myself
– t-h-e –
in various ways and was soon giggling at my pronunciations.
When Mrs. Huddlemeyer so pleasantly asked me
with her curious tone
what I thought was funny,
I just blushed,
as if I had committed some social intestinal faux pas.
I was very shy and often unable to speak.
My parents had corrected me often on my speech
as a pre-kindergartener,
so later that morning during nap time,
when the boy on the next mat teased me with,
I seen you blushing, you big baby,
I whispered back,
Saw.