Reading Was a Waste of Time

Dots and line and blips on a page. Squiggles. Dashes. Swirls. Short and long ones. Some with loops. Others just plain plain. None meant anything to Charles. They never had. He had gotten along fine in forty-six years without reading anything at all. He knew numbers. He could add and subtract. Numbers was about money. They made sense. Reading was a waste of time. His mama had apparently been a reader, but he never knew her. She died the day he was born. He sat on the subway watching people stare at their squiggles and dots. Most had flat screens now. Some kids were sliding their hands across their flat cold screens, and whistles and bells were happening. Once in a while an old lady in the back who was holding an old fashioned printed book would laugh. No one looked up or even her way, when she did. Subways are not places where people are friendly. One guy had turned his book and shown Charles a cartoon once. He looked at it, but it meant nothing. The man looked miffed, and stopped speaking to him. Reading was a language he did not speak. He was not worried about it. He stared out the window and thought about all the people in the houses. Wondering what they were having for supper. Wondering if the house children were loud like the subway children. People used to smile sometimes on the subway. Sometimes one would wink or grin at him. Now they were all stirred up in their flat screens, even their phones seemed to be intriguing to them. Reading was a language he did not speak. He was forty-six-years old now. He did not need it. When he got home he could listen to his TV. His mama would have read a book to him he thought. This made him smile.