How did we get here? By not bothering to read.

[slightlv]

4. When I was a young kid, reading was presented to me as an ideal...

learn to read and understand what you're reading, and the world will open up to you. I read everything I could get my hands on, even the back of cereal boxes. I had a huge library by the time I was 18, that I'd bought myself through a junior high book club. Before hitting the downward slide after I turned 65, my vocabulary, both oral and written, was excellent. In fact, one of the hardest things to accept as I grow older isn't the fact I can't run across the front yard, or move the sofa around anymore. It's that I'll pull up blank spots in my brain... where I know the word I'm searching for but it just won't come. That's the part that to me, is down right scary about this growing old thing. I'm still luckier than my hubby, who has much more trouble with it than I do right now, but I worry about the future when it becomes a more frequent stressor for me.

At 69, I will say the world did open up to me, thanks to learning to read above my grade level when I was a kid... and being curious enough to still read everything around me. But I'm also now convinced that just as much attention should have been put on math and age appropriate economics. I'm a poorer person (over all, and in fact) because that was never as important to me as reading and understanding concepts such as government, civics, religion, and politics.