a terrible thing to waste.

"Sub...ssss...I'm sorry."

"That's ok", says the interviewer.

"Eh...em...Sub...sss...sssh. I don't know how to say that...sorry."

"It's subsidy. Try the next one."

"Un..ssssah...I'm sorry..."

"Unsubsidized."

"Right. Eee...eeee...Eeeeqwideee."

The lady sitting next to me gives me a high eye brow with a slow nod of disapproval. Her time is being wasted. She shakes her head and as she looks down into her Coach bag she whispers gently, "Equity". He body language says, "Duh".

I stare into my tender palms trying to say the word in my head over and over with hopes of transmitting the sound to this sister across the room via telepathy but instead I simply reply, "Yeah" to the woman sitting next to me. My body language screaming, "Despair". Half of the class was eliminated from the interviewing process because they could not read a script effectively and could not pronounce a series of given words; words like "familiarity" and "pathetic".

"If you liked it then you shoulda' put a ring on it...if you liked it then you shoulda' put a ring on it..."

Is...that...her phone ringing? Did she really...

That's another blog.

Everyone in the room was a person of color except for the interviewer. Her hair was reddish-orange, she had a few wayward teeth, spoke with a soft tone, and on today, she seemed nice, the typical non threatening type sent in to display a certain amount of liberal authority without scaring us militant folk away. No, this wasn't JP Morgan Chase or the Stock Exchange but a simple "run of the mill" type job to get over the recessional hump, yet they had their expectations. Her voice didn't lack compassion, she was patient and sincere. Or was it indifference or for lack of a better word..."familiarity"? It almost reminded me of being back in grade school when the teacher would call on us tiny tots to read a sentence from the reading book...

"Jill and Sally sat under the tree and ate apples..." I would gloat and wait for my cousin to go next so we all could laugh. She would stumble over her words and the teacher would tell her...

"Sound it out." She would. Many students would refuse to read aloud but would rather act out and instead of reading, would be placed in a "time out" or would be made to sit in the corner. Only this time we were all adults and the corner wasn't some magical place where we could escape the world of all our fears and make funny faces for our classmates approval. This new corner is called real life and Ms.Celie ain't coming to save Ms.Sophia from bagging up those groceries for old Ms.Millie.

I have always loved to read. I can remember having a ton of books within arms reach ever since I was a small child. I lived in libraries and even used to sneak in the High School library where I read Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" for the first time wearing baggy jeans and Jordan gym shoes hoping no one would see me. I joined the Speech team and quit when I realized I was surrounded by a bunch of nerdy White folks that everyone picked on and never looked back. Was I like them? When I became an adult, I fell asleep on the floor in the solitude of my bedroom reading "The Price of the Ticket" because I was scared of going to bed out of fear that I had grasped some piece of heaven or some hidden puzzle to life that only comes before death and that tomorrow I would never wake up. True story. I lose myself in words, tales, stories and definition. So when I looked around the room as the script was passed from one person to the next, I couldn't help but wonder: Who dropped the literary ball in their lives?

When the interviewer called the selected few into the next room to dismiss them, I'm sure she didn't offer any after school classes or opportunities to enhance their reading skills. She probably didn't suggest a reading course at a community college because that would have been deemed innappropriate. No, we don't do that in today's society, the dog eat dog world of America. But instead, they were more than likely sent out the door with whatever was left of their integrity. Afterall, it's not their job to prepare these grown adults for the workforce.

My mother moved me around a lot throughout my childhood school years. I know what its like to get excited to see a fresh, new and unmarked textbook and know the difference between teachers who are giving their career their all versus those who are just babysitting a bunch of children who seem to be irritating the hell out of them. I remember being in my 3rd grade classroom in the city and having a teacher scream all day as children threw chairs and slipped out of the closet door to run the halls. If I hadn't known any difference before then, I would have thought it were the norm. I wrote a letter to the principle and was moved to another class which was so different, I thought I was in another school. I wonder if it was the fact that the teacher was better or if we thought she was better because she was White. "Why would she come to this neighborhood and teach our bad Black asses anyway...Right?" You've all seen the movies like "Dangerous Minds" with Michelle Pfeiffer. The great White hope comes into the down trodden inner city where there are these barbaric, sullen children waiting for them in the dark ages of "Urban" school systems.

But my question is....Why and How? Can we totally blame the school system for the blatant illiteracy and unwillingness to prepare the proper path leading our people to a realistic position in this world? Or do we blame the parents? It's really a tough call considering that illiteracy is most likely passed on through generations until someone is ready and willing to break the cycle. However, I understand how easy it is to just say...fuck it...