i saw a man learning how to read today. i guess our local library has a literacy outreach, and this balding, fifty-something guy was taking advantage of it. i wanted to tiptoe around him, because i thought maybe he'd be embarassed or something. he was working on "we're, were, where", sounding them out and trying to get their meanings straight. i wonder why he never learned in elementary school - laziness, maybe, or some family situation that wasn't the best. but either way, i am so excited by his willingness to go back and learn the stuff everybody else learned a long time ago. i wanted to give him a hug and tell him how proud and thrilled and excited i was for him. yeah, i'm sure i wouldn't embarass him then. it's not even the reading thing, though, it's the attitude of being teachable, willing to learn what you need to, whether or not you should already know it. when i get honest, i can admit to not knowing a million things that i think i should know. for instance, i don't really know how to listen right when someone is telling me that their ten-year-old rottweiler is dying. that's what happened to me yesterday at the roadhouse. a man sat down at my table alone, ordered a michelobe and a double shot of jack daniels, and couldn't look me in the eye. so i sat down with him and, with tears in his eyes, this big tattooed man told me that his rottweiler has degenerative disc syndrome and will be put down the next day. i listened, i touched his hand...what to do? i didn't know. they don't have classes to teach you what to say when someone is hurting. i hope i'd have the courage to go if they did.