I don't know where to start my story about my reading problems. Should we blame the problem on the little boy who didn't really go to school before the fifth grade? The little boy who most people thought was mentally retarded because he couldn't read? The little boy who never fit in anywhere?

My tutor told me I should just start writing and not wait until I learned to spell perfectly, and so I did. My story is between the lines of some of what I wrote during the first years in the Literacy Program.

THE PLACE The place I have visited. The place I came back from. I call it the place because to me it is as real as any place I have ever been. For me it was a long journey. Did I start this journey before I was born? Or did I find this place on my own through my own work in life? I do not know. Was it the turns in life that did not go right? The things I could not control, the twisting of things I could not untwist, the loneliness, the unbearable pain? This path I walked upon to reach the place. Open your eyes and you will see people trying desperately to find this place! Open your eyes and you will see people who live in this place. Open your eyes and laugh! For then you keep this path open for those people who walk it. Just laugh and go on your way. All the things I did to find this place . . . the place I left behind. It would be easy to find. I could walk the path of bleached white bones of all the skeletons that did not stay in my closet. People say I had a breakdown. I say, "Cars, cars have breakdowns." Some people say that I was mad. I say, "Mad? Is madness something your are born with, or is it your own work in life that made you mad? Is it the turns in life that did not go right, the twist of things I could not control? Or was it the loneliness or the people who laughed? Yes, this place is madness. Yes, I have visited this place.

I remember my graduation from eighth grade. When the principal handed me my diploma, he snickered. He knew I couldn't read. I finally dropped out in the tenth grade. Until this day, I can't walk by my old school without feeling anger.

It was rough out there trying to get a job without knowing how to read. There was one job I liked a lot, but after a year of working, they wanted to test my reading level. I quit because I couldn't stand the humiliation of people finding out I couldn't read. People always think you're stupid when you can't read.

For many years, I supported myself playing poker for the house in cardrooms around town. A drinking problem finally got to me, and I ended up living on the streets. One day, sick from garbage can food and whiskey, I rolled into a center for recovering alcoholics seeking help. I had been beaten up and one eye was swollen shut, the other eye black and sunken. I had hit bottom.

It was during this time that I looked again for someone to teach me how to read. There was a library across from the recovery center. I knew it well because when I lived on the streets, I used to use the restrooms there. This time I went to the counter and asked a lady if she knew about a reading program. She pointed to a big red sign with a phone number on it. Calling that phone number changed my life.

I HELD MY HAND OUT I held my hand out, and people laughed. I held my hand up, and it was seen. I held my hand out, and people shook it patronizingly. I held my hands up, and my hands were held. I held my hands out, and people grabbed them and pulled, but they pulled too hard, I could not hold on. I held my hands up, and I was lifted up.

Reading will always be a struggle for me. But reading has made it possible for me to survive in this world. I have a job that I enjoy as a custodian at the Visalia Adult School right here where the Literacy Program is. The teachers at the school are like my family. I help train new tutors and do public speaking with the literacy coordinator.

Last year I attended my first literacy conference with California Literacy and met with other new readers. It was great! One night we were sitting around together talking when someone asked me what I do. I said, "I own a school!" Then another new reader said, "That sounds like the beginning of a poem." All of a sudden, we just started writing this poem. The next day it was read at the New Writers Luncheon.

I OWN A SCHOOL I own a school late at night with empty rooms and all the books. Some old and outdated -- used up. Occasionally I throw these books out -- the books that did not wait for me to read. Like at all schools, some are thrown out. You can't stop it. The emptiness, the anger, the fear, the book that is lost. Like so many of us who walked these halls. The stories are alive. To lose one is to lose a life before it has lived -- a book that did not wait for me to read.