I always took a shine to language. When I was in second grade, Mrs. Peloso put me with the owl readers, the top animal ranking of us 8-year-olds with the finest reading comprehension, ahead of the bears, turtles, even dogs. Years later then, during the Great Recession, I became irritable — embarrassed by the fact that I could barely understand news reports of what happened to the economy. Our savings? I would read a sentence over and over in the news, lips twitching, a doctor of letters from Stanford who could not comprehend what he was reading.

Source: Los Angeles Times January 13, 2019 11:03 UTC