The word was ‘island’.

For the longest time I thought my first grade class consisted of two people, me and Fred Karns. Thanks to Hippie moms and Head Start, Fred and I flew high above the fun of Dick and Jane and landed ourselves in a world of squeaky plastic covered library books. Once a week we blazed new literary trails through the school library accompanied by our seasoned Sherpa, Mrs. Fox. Stacks and shelves and rows of beautiful books. Thick and thin and all smelling like old leather.  I was certain that the two nervous women in the library existed for the sole purpose of creating books just so Fred and I would have something to read. Upon returning our weekly treasures I made a point to critique each book to the librarian as I believed we were on a mission to personally approve each book for use by the rest of the student body. I’m not sure where I got this notion, but it wasn’t the first time my vanity would be bigger than my body.

I don’t remember when I first began to read. My mother said that I’d always done it. One night she read to me and the next day I was reading to her. Letters and sounds made sense to me in the same way that lullabies make sense to infants. I thought that writing and storytelling were the same as painting and I fancied myself a great artist.

The word was ‘island’.

I think the book was about butterflies. It stunned me, as I hovered over the word, not quite certain what it was. ‘I. ‘S’. I’d never seen anything like it. ‘I’ and ‘s’ together were ‘is’. That was easy. But what was that ‘laaaaaaa’ thing tacked onto the end? There was an ice cream shop downtown named Isley’s. Isley’s  had an ‘I’ and an ‘S’ in it but, that was the extent of my ability to associate the word. 

I could feel the pressure mounting. Fred began to squirm in his seat. Mrs. Fox gently urged me to ‘sound out the word.’ I sensed a trap. But what was the trip wire? I knew that this word was not ‘islet’ which had something to do with land and water. Logically, I knew the butterflies in the story probably were not flying to Isley’s for ice cream. I’ll never understand how I missed that word. I knew what an island was and there was a picture of hundreds of butterflies taking flight from a mass of land in the middle of a blue ocean. Gilligan’s Island was my favorite tv show and I watched it every week without fail. And yet, I panicked under pressure and fell into Mrs. Fox’s trap, sounding out the word ‘is’-land. 

Mrs. Fox was very quiet. Fred looked at her expectantly – not really sure what the word was himself. I stared down at the book. A huge orange butterfly was flying off  an “ISLAND!” I shouted. “I-LAND. It’s ISLAND, right?” I asked Mrs. Fox.

“Yes.” She said. ‘That’s a tricky one. The ‘s’ is silent. Let’s write that down so you can practice.”

I scowled. Betrayed by my own monogram! Fred looked stunned and fingered his small stack of missed words.