Reading With the Right Brain: Read Faster by Reading Ideas Instead of Just Words (14 page)

“TOM!”

No answer.

“TOM!”

No answer.

“What’s gone with
that boy,
I wonder?
You TOM!”

No answer.

The old lady pulled her
spectacles down
and looked over them
about the room;
then she put them up
and looked out
under them.
She seldom
or never looked
THROUGH them
for so small a thing
as a boy;
they were her state pair,
the pride of her heart,
and were built for
“style,”
not service—
she could have seen
through a pair
of stove-lids
just as well.
She looked perplexed
for a moment,
and then said,
not fiercely,
but still loud enough
for the furniture
to hear:

“Well,
I lay
if I get hold of you
I’ll—”

She did not finish,
for by this time
she was bending down
and punching
under the bed
with the broom,
and so she needed breath
to punctuate
the punches with.
She resurrected nothing
but the cat.

“I never did see
the beat of that boy!”

She went to
the open door
and stood in it
and looked out
among the tomato vines
and “jimpson” weeds
that constituted
the garden.
No Tom.
So she lifted up
her voice
at an angle
calculated for distance
and shouted:

“Y-o-u-u TOM!”

There was
a slight noise
behind her
and she turned
just in time
to seize a small boy
by the slack
of his roundabout
and arrest his flight.

“There!
I might
‘a’ thought
of that closet.
What you been doing
in there?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing!
Look at your hands.
And look at your mouth.
What IS that truck?”

“I don’t know,
Aunt.”

“Well,
I know.
It’s jam—
that’s what it is.
Forty times
I’ve said
if you didn’t
let that jam alone
I’d skin you.
Hand me that switch.”

The switch hovered
in the air—
the peril was desperate—

“My!
Look behind you,
Aunt!”

The old lady
whirled round,
and snatched her skirts
out of danger.
The lad fled
on the instant,
scrambled up
the high board-fence,
and disappeared over it.

His Aunt Polly stood
surprised a moment,
and then broke
into a gentle laugh.

“Hang the boy,
can’t I never
learn anything?
Ain’t he played me
tricks enough
like that
for me to be
looking out for him
by this time?
But old fools
is the biggest fools
there is.
Can’t learn
an old dog new tricks,
as the saying is.
But my goodness,
he never
plays them alike,
two days,
and how is a body
to know what’s coming?
He ‘pears to know
just how long
he can torment me
before I get
my dander up,
and he knows
if he can make out
to put me off
for a minute
or make me laugh,
it’s all down again
and I can’t
hit him a lick.
I ain’t doing my duty
by that boy,
and that’s
the Lord’s truth,
goodness knows.
Spare the rod
and spile the child,
as the Good Book says.
I’m a laying up sin
and suffering
for us both,
I know.
He’s full of
the Old Scratch,
but laws-a-me!
He’s my own
dead sister’s boy,
poor thing,
and I ain’t got
the heart
to lash him,
somehow.
Every time
I let him off,
my conscience
does hurt me so,
and every time
I hit him
my old heart
most breaks.
Well-a-well,
man that
is born of woman
is of few days
and full of trouble,
as the Scripture says,
and I reckon it’s so.
He’ll play hookey
this afternoon,
and I’ll just
be obleeged
to make him work,
tomorrow,
to punish him.
It’s mighty hard
to make him work
Saturdays,
when all the boys
is having holiday,
but he hates work
more than he hates
anything else,
and I’ve GOT
to do some of
my duty by him,
or I’ll be
the ruination
of the child.”

Tom did play hookey,
and he had
a very good time.
He got back home
barely in season
to help Jim,
the small colored boy,
saw next-day’s wood
and split the kindlings
before supper—
at least he was
there in time
to tell his adventures
to Jim
while Jim did
three-fourths
of the work.
Tom’s younger brother
(or rather half-brother)
Sid
was already through
with his part
of the work
(picking up chips),
for he was
a quiet boy,
and had no adventurous,
troublesome ways.

While Tom
was eating his supper,
and stealing sugar
as opportunity offered,
Aunt Polly
asked him questions
that were
full of guile,
and very deep—
for she wanted
to trap him
into damaging
revealments.
Like many other
simple-hearted souls,
it was her pet vanity
to believe
she was endowed
with a talent for
dark and mysterious
diplomacy,
and she loved
to contemplate her most
transparent devices
as marvels
of low cunning.
Said she:

“Tom,
it was middling warm
in school,
warn’t it?”

“Yes’m.”

“Powerful warm,
warn’t it?”

“Yes’m.”

“Didn’t you want to go
in a-swimming, Tom?”

A bit of a scare
shot through Tom—
a touch of
uncomfortable suspicion.
He searched
Aunt Polly’s face,
but it told him nothing.
So he said:

“No’m—well,
not very much.”

The old lady reached out her hand and felt Tom’s shirt, and said:

“But you ain’t too warm now, though.” And it flattered her to reflect that she had discovered that the shirt was dry without anybody knowing that that was what she had in her mind. But in spite of her, Tom knew where the wind lay, now. So he forestalled what might be the next move:

“Some of us pumped on our heads—mine’s damp yet. See?”

Aunt Polly was vexed to think she had overlooked that bit of circumstantial evidence, and missed a trick. Then she had a new inspiration:

“Tom, you didn’t have to undo your shirt collar where I sewed it, to pump on your head, did you? Unbutton your jacket!”

The trouble vanished out of Tom’s face. He opened his jacket. His shirt collar was securely sewed.

“Bother! Well, go ‘long with you. I’d made sure you’d played hookey and been a-swimming. But I forgive ye, Tom. I reckon you’re a kind of a singed cat, as the saying is—better’n you look. THIS time.”

She was half sorry her sagacity had miscarried, and half glad that Tom had stumbled into obedient conduct for once.

But Sidney said:

“Well, now…

Chapter 8: Texting the Brain

Thinking about how you are reading,
while
you are reading, can seem counterproductive because the extra effort required would obviously distract you from your comprehension. You can really only think of one thing at a time, so thinking about
what your brain is doing would interfere with thinking about what you are reading.

But having an overall concept of how the brain reads will help you practice more effectively. An overview of what your brain is doing and what you are trying to change, will help you stay on the right track and stay focused on the techniques that will get your right brain involved in your reading.

It’s not necessary to stay consciously aware of this process while you read, but removing some of the mystery may leave you with a general lay of the land, to make it easier to know where you are going and make your progress more straightforward.

Mechanics

In basic terms, text is a communication device and the reader’s mind is a receiver. Just like a text message sent from one smart phone to another, printed words are sent from the page to your brain. In both cases, a signal is being sent, received, and decoded.

How does the brain actually accomplish this task? How can you know someone’s thoughts simply by looking at squiggles on a page? It seems like some kind of magic that these printed marks are actually speaking to your brain. How is this possible? Text enters the eyes like any other image, but how do images of text turn into thoughts? Where and how does real reading take place?

This is not a course on neurolinguistics—and anyone who is an expert in the field is invited to clarify any essential discrepancies—but some basic concepts will be useful, so here are a few simple glimpses under the hood to help conceptualize what is involved.

Like all mental tasks, reading uses a network of modules and systems, each relying on its own network of neurons. Many areas of the brain work together simultaneously, and while the complete process is not even entirely understood yet, a general awareness of how reading is accomplished can give you a deeper respect for the amazing complexity involved, as well as an appreciation of how and why reading with the right brain boosts your reading effectiveness.

One network of neurons, which many people may not think of as an actual part of the brain, is the eye. Reading starts with light entering the eye. And even though the whole eye is filled with light, only the fovea—a portion of the retina which occupies about fifteen degrees of the visual field—is used for reading.

Signals from the fovea are transferred to the occipital lobe at the back of the brain, where the light signals are recognized as shapes. From this point on, these shapes are converted into words in a step-by-step process along a path through the left side of the brain.

The recognized shapes are passed from the occipital lobe to the visual recognition area, where shapes are recognized as letters, then passed further forward to the Wernicke’s area. This is the area which understands both written or spoken language. This area recognizes the groups of letters as words. From here, the information branches off in several more directions.