[ SECRET POST #2665 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2665 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 064 secrets from Secret Submission Post #381.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Inspired by Secret #3

[(Anonymous)]

How old were you when you learned to read? What was your first book, if you know?

I was four and the first book I read through all by myself was "Are You My Mother".

On the other hand, I struggled with writing throughout my childhood, and when we started learning cursive, class became a nightmare. Every assignment had to be written in cursive but I would get them handed back to me with the words "illegible" scrawled across the top. I didn't develop the fine motor skills needed until I was town.

Now I'm the only one in my college who takes notes in cursive and everyone always wants mine because they keep seeing me write really fast (I never quite got the hang of taking notes so I pretty much take dictation) and long paragraphs. And it turns out nobody uses cursive, they just print. I actually had a girl condescendingly tell me, "oh look at your handwriting, it's so third grade!"

EDIT for age I could write

[(Anonymous)]

*Until I was twelve.

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[(Anonymous)]

I am honestly shocked that you know this. Is this a normal thing for people to remember? I have absolutely no idea when I began reading, I'd guess in kindergarten or first grade? No clue about books either.

My handwriting is a mix of cursive and print. Most people I know actually have a mishmash of the two when writing quickly. Except my brother, who oddly writes all in block letters.

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[kaijinscendre]

I have no idea. I mean from stories maybe 3 or so?

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[sarillia]

My brother taught me to read when I was four. I don't remember what my first book was. I do remember my first non-children's book was Little Women.

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[cushlamochree]

I have no recollection whatsoever. Way too far back.

I do remember cursive sucked, though, and then like you said no one ever uses cursive so I never actually got good at it, just kept being bad at it until teachers stopped caring (which IIRC took from about the third grade until the sixth).

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[(Anonymous)]

I don't recall either of those, but I do remember the first "big" book that I read all by myself and actually enjoyed was Matilda by Roald Dhal.

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[(Anonymous)]

I was also four when I learned to read, although apparently I liked to flip through books even as a baby (obviously I couldn't read them; I just looked at the pictures).

Can't remember the first book I ever read, but the first book I can remember reading was The Cat in the Hat.

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[(Anonymous)]

I know that I was definitely four when I started reading and the first book I read was about a fly flying around. It's one of my earliest memories.

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[othellia]

No idea. Apparently I could read before I could talk.

Though I remember in kindergarten, I really liked The Caboose Who Got Loose. Also The Beginner's Bible, since I went to a Catholic Pre-K and the nuns there gave it to me as a going away present since I moved in the middle of the year. That's about as far back as my memory goes.

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[dreemyweird]

I was three, my granny taught me how to read. And my first book was a collection of local fairytales.

And then everything was reading and I read an inappropriate number of completely random books and my life was never quite the same :3

I was lucky in that all my family members had higher education and in that the aforementioned granny was a language/literature teacher. So I was really surprised to enter the kindergarten and then the school only to find out that some kids in the first form still had little to none reading skills. It was like, wut. Why do you still pronounce every syllable separately and start stammering mid-word. (I wasn't a particularly arrogant kid, I was genuinely surprised).

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[comradesmiler]

Ages ago. not sure if I remember.

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[(Anonymous)]

Apparently when I was three-ish I faked reading a book and gave my grandmother a heart-attack. I wasn't actually reading the words, I'd just memorised which bits of the story went with which pictures, and made it look like I was reading out loud. I don't think I learned to actually read until a couple of years later, though I don't actually remember it. I joined the library when I was seven, and I remember that the first book I got out was 'The Tribe With No Feet', so obviously I'd been reading a while by then.

My handwriting has always been a little weird. It's rounded and only partly joined-up, and apparently it's quite distinctive. To the point that when we had to hand up anonymous review forms one year, the teacher was telling us to write whatever we felt because nobody would know whose writing was whose, "except yours, A. Yours is a bit more unique." Um. Thanks, I think?

People wanted my notes in college too, though. Again, I write quickly, and with the aid of some personal shorthand fairly completely too, so they were usually among the most comprehensive notes and only required a little translation. It meant I had to study less, between the complete notes and the fact that my memory is really good, so most of what I did was the required readings and brushing up for details like dates and names the night before exams.

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[dethtoll]

Four. After doctors told my mother over and over I'd never be able to read, ever. Or speak.

First thing I read, entirely on my own, was Jump Frog Jump. The second thing I read on my own was a newspaper article.

And when I was younger, my first word was "shit." Explains a lot don't it?

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[(Anonymous)]

3-1/2, I started reading the coupons in the newspaper out loud one day. TBF my parents read aloud to me for as far back as I could remember, so I think that's why it was so easy for me to pick it up once all the right brain connections formed and fired, etc.

First book I read through on my own? Not sure. There were so many around....

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[(Anonymous)]

Started writing and reading at 5-6 (when primary school started). I write in cursive because that's how I was taught at 6.

Can't remember my first book!

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[pantswarrior]

I was two. Apparently before that point, my parents couldn't ever sit down if they wanted to just rest or do something productive because I'd come toddling over with a book and ask them to read to me. There were some books I allegedly had memorized because my parents had read them to me so many times.

And although I don't really have the clear memory of it anymore, I have recounted it so many times that I still remember how I figured it out. My mom was busy and couldn't read to me, so I sat down with my copy of "The Monster At the End of This Book" and was turning the pages and looking at the pictures and mentally repeating the things my parents said that went along with each picture, when somewhere along the line I thought to myself "I wonder what these funny shapes are up here that aren't part of the... WAIT A SECOND!"

So since I had the book memorized, I basically went through and figured out words based on where they appeared in the book compared to where my parents said the words out loud when they were reading it to me. And then took that to other books.

Apparently I kept this knowledge to myself until one day my mom VOLUNTEERED to read me a story, and I asked her "when do I get to read you a story?" and she told me I could read her a story when I learned to read, and I told her I could. And at first she thought I was just reciting from memory, so she went and got a new book and gave it to me, and... well, what do you know?

I don't really remember when I learned to write, but I do have a "book" I wrote and illustrated when I was 4 or 5 (about five pages long with like one short sentence on each page, and pictures I drew of a hermit crab's adventures), and a notebook full of handwritten poetry that had to have been written when I was 6, because one of them read as follows:

my brother gets into trouble
he's only three years old
but when he's sad
I'm always glad
even if he got into trouble

XD

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[kamino_neko]

I was reading before I formed more than fragmentary memories, and the first book I read is obviously lost to memory - I know I was reading fluently well before I was 4 since that's when I have my first solid memories.

(OTOH, if I was reading aloud, you'd probably think I was illiterate until I was in something like 4th grade, since there were a lot of words I'd only encountered in print, or which had spelling and pronunciation which weren't well connected, so I thought they were two different, but synonymous words - 'Mrs' was one of the latter.)

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[inkdust]

I was three, I think. No idea what my first book was, but my first word was "book."

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[(Anonymous)]

I was three when I first began to read. Seems a common age among FS-ers. I was the only one in my primary school class who could read when I started at age four.

I don't remember my first book, but when I was four, just before I started school, I remember reading my first novels: Moby Dick, Lorna Doone and Treasure Island. I only liked Treasure Island. Friday's status as a kind of servant confused me but I liked when he was building things out of items washed up on the beach.

I hated Moby Dick so much. Killing whales. Nasty. Plus the language is terrible and boring. I tried to re-read it as an adult and my first impressions hold true, although I'm amazed at four that I even attempted it.

I have fond memories of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I don't think I came across that one until I was about eight, when I went out somewhere that had a reading corner. I was a bit old for it and was sad I hadn't got to read it when I was younger.

I read Where The Wild Things Are when I was about six, which was perfect.

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[nightscale]

I'll go with 3 but I'm not actually sure.

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[(Anonymous)]

Idk. I've been able to read for as long as I can remember. Which either means I have a terrible memory or I learned to read very young.

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know how old I was, or what the first book I read all the way through was. But I was a very premature baby, and shortly after I was born, I was flown from a tiny local hospital to San Francisco. Every few months, and then every year, and then every couple of years, I was supposed to go back to that hospital and get a checkup, not only on how I was doing physically, but how I was developing mentally too. The doctors said there was a pretty good chance I'd be a vegetable or at least not that bright. I'd had trouble breathing on my own at first, and no air+developing brain=bad. But when I was still a toddler, they put a book in my hands during one of these tests and asked me to read the word "apple." Instead I read the whole sentence about "the big red apple," and kept going from there. But even though I could read from 3 or so onwards, I was lazy and didn't actually like reading until I was seven or so.

Re: Inspired by Secret #3

[philstar22]

The first thing I remember trying to read was Heinlein juveniles. My dad would read them to me every night, and at the point where I was learning to read I started sounding out things and helping.

So basically I had no chance to not be a scifi fan (although my sister always skipped out on the reading and never really enjoyed it).