The first memory I have of literacy was when I was in kindergarten. We were learning the alphabet and all I wanted to do was figure out how to put the letters together to form an word. As simple as it may seem, the first word I learned was cat. I felt accomplished, even at the age of 5, to have learned such a small word. I even learned the definition of c-a-t even though I knew what a cat was, I had never spelled it before. I believe I drove my parents crazy because I walked around spelling every word they said. As I graduated from one grade to the next, the words I learned grew as did my knowledge. I was always the goof-ball studying way past my bed time for my spelling tests. One word, in particular that I had misspelled, still lingers to this day. The word is across. I had spelled it "a-c-r-o-s-s," and I just knew that was right. When I received my graded paper, there was a red X mark. I was so upset with myself that my teacher had to pull me out into the hall to calm me down because I was crying so hard that I had disrupted the rest of the class. I still have to check myself when I spell that word and that was many years ago. Then was also when I realized how hard I am on myself because that word was the only one I had misspelled! I cannot believe I was a perfectionist even back then. I suspect that was also when I realized how important being literate was and is. I am grateful for my education and the ability to learn as well as write. I never want to take that for granted. Even though I loved words and learning the meanings of words, I still had somewhat of a hard time understanding what I read. It was like I could not comprehend and retain everything. I was always shy when it came to reading stories out loud in the classroom. I wanted to read with emphasis on certain words and use accents where I felt they were appropriate, but I always felt subconscious. There were far better readers than I, but I did not give up. I just did