Bruce Cameron

 

September 11, 2013



Editor’s Note: The following column was originally published in 2008.

Superman taught me to read.

I’m not sure how old I was when I started reading, though I’m pretty sure it was before I went to high school. My cousin John had a stack of superhero comic books in his room, which drew me like a magnet whenever I was at his house. (Buried in the pile were a couple of magazines with large fold-out pictures of undressed women — these didn’t interest me in the slightest, another clue that I probably wasn’t in high school.)

One day I was scrutinizing a picture of Superman punching out a bad guy, and the colorful word that had always been incomprehensible to me suddenly leapt off the page: POW!

POW, indeed. Just like that, I could read.

A few years later, I got into my first fistfight, with a boy named Brad, and when I socked him, it didn’t make a POW at all — it was more like the noise you hear when a housefly taps against a window pane. When Brad hit me back, I didn’t hear a POW then, either, just the sound of me crying.

By leaping over tall grade levels in a single bound and puzzling out words on my own, I was setting myself up for a series of embarrassing moments. For example, the first time I encountered the word “germs” I decided it must be short for “Germans,” about which I read all the time because I was obsessed with World War II comic books. I was therefore a little startled when I came across this sentence: “Betsy didn’t want to look in the garbage can because she was sure it was full of germs.”

Wait, what? The garbage can was full of Germans? What in the world were they doing in there? Did Superman know about this?

I puzzled out the word “anxiety” and decided it was pronounced “anks-ity,” as in, “No wonder Betsy had so much anks-ity, her trash can was full of Germans!”

Most of the readers in second grade, when called upon to read, would stand and visibly strain, wincing as they squeezed out the text one word at a time.

When they hit a word they didn’t recognize, they’d bump up against it like elevator doors trying to close on a foot, banging repeatedly on the first consonant.

Student: At the ... duh ... duh ... duh ...

Teacher: “Department.”

I could recognize and comprehend the words, but proper pronunciation was another matter.

Me: She sig-heed (sighed) as she ka-needed (kneaded) the do-you-guh (dough).

Teacher: Wait, what?

The students, guessing that I probably got at least one of the words wrong, sniggered.

This constant mispronunciation of vocabulary words led to a meeting with my parents, wherein the teacher suggested that maybe I should be held back a grade, or perhaps put in a bag full of rocks and thrown into the river.

My parents seemed pretty shocked that a kid who spent all his free time devouring books would be so illiterate, but was there any wonder I had trouble with my native tongue? I was taught to read by a guy from Krypton!

Grimly, my father decided he would spend an hour or so every night jamming the English language into my brain. However, he quickly became bored with the book I was reading, “Betsy’s Big Day,” even if I did spice up the plot by sticking some Germans in the trashcan. As far as he was concerned, if I was going to learn to pronounce words properly, I could do it reading “The Godfather,” by Mario Puzo.

It was the biggest favor he ever did for me. Though I didn’t always understand what was going on, I was astounded to learn there was more to literature than a girl named Betsy who adopted a poodle. Talk about POW! Books could be scary, suspenseful and exciting — especially when you woke up with a horse head on the sheets. Bye, bye, Betsy!

My father used his super powers for good and not evil, opening a world to me that I’ve never left: the world of real books.

So, yes, I saw him as Superman.

(Bruce Cameron has a Website at http://www.wbrucecameron.com.)

COPYRIGHT 2013 CREATORS.COM

 

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