The Big Plus When You’re Forty-three by Stewart Bell
I said to myself “enough!” I had to do something about it, so I did. I was as brave as a lion making the nervous call “yes we can help you,” the male voice said. After a meeting I was given a weekly one-to-one class about two hours on a Thursday night.
Life was pretty good. Married with two kids, a nice house, a job I enjoy, good friends and very happy. But it bothered me. It always had but I learned to duck and dive and to be cunning as a fox. I think I bluffed it pretty well, or did I? At the age of forty three I could not read or write.
I started my class in May 2004. It was very hard to pick up and so frustrating! After a year or so my tutor moved away. I was put in a small group then given a new tutor. With his different ways I began to pick things up quicker. My tutor said I was spelling, reading and writing words. Every week it got better and better. Thursday night was a joy. Then one night everything worked. The reading, the writing and the spelling! My tutor turned round and just smiled at me. “Excellent!” He said “you did that without thinking.” On my way driving home that night I said to myself “for the first time in my life I can do this!” A day like this I thought would never come. I am as keen as mustard every Thursday as I get stronger and stronger especially with the spelling! It was just magic to read a book for the first time and even better to be able to write this story.
