Teach Me How to Read!

This partial fantasy and partial realistic story takes place because of a strange and unworldly event that happened inside the local library in the small town of Bonners Ferry, Idaho. It transcends the bounds of earth and time in a unique way. It follows the plight of a young man that was saddled with many hardships including being illiterate, suffering from poverty, a severe stuttering problem, and the lack of a basic education. It follows his quest to overcome all of those obstacles especially his desire to be able to read, write, and communicate with others.Inside his mind he could form sentences, paragraphs, stories, and even various complex concepts. He could converse with a basic intellectual understanding of speech within his own thoughts. Sadly though, the words he was trying to convey or speak to another person were lost between his inner thoughts and those that formed on his tongue, or his spoken word, and he would stutter profusely. I would say that a good portion of this story is factual as I was born and raised near that small town in Northern Idaho, with the balance of it being a total journey into fiction and fantasy. There was a young man such as the main character Lloyd (not his real name) in this story that I as well as many of the town's people knew back then in the 1960's. People like Lloyd were treated differently in that era of time. Sometimes they were shunned, made fun of, belittled, or just plain ignored. I tried to look past those outdated stereotypes that surrounded people like him, and especially in Lloyd's case. I think that you will find those parts of this story that are a bit on the fantasy side to be very intriguing. I wove into the fabric of my story a lot of things that I learned and conceived during my studies of how the human mind functions, how we are shaped by our experiences in life, and how our emotions either shape or skew our reality of every day living.If nothing else, I hope reading this story will instill in you the importance of reading and possibly a new appetite to seek the mental experiences and knowledge you will attain from simply taking a break from your busy life and curling up with a good book. Finally, I hope it opens your heart to be more kind, empathetic, and understanding to someone less fortunate that yourself that may have been dealt with hardships that you could hardly fathom or comprehend.Jerry W. Miller