“He can’t read. Like, not at ALL.”

In the beginning they all came in the way Clive did:

An administrator from another floor appeared at my desk, a man at her side. Administrators often brought new students to meet with me, the supervisor of a GED tutoring program. But this one was different. The admin looked perturbed.

“He can’t read,” she stage-whispered loudly to me. “Like, not at ALL. I don’t know what to do with him!” 

He towered above her, stoic, with rounded shoulders and skin that was very dark and deeply lined. He stared straight ahead, pretending he couldn’t hear her loud whispers. Every now and then, his eyes would dart in my direction. He looked both weary and wary.

“We don’t really teach reading,” I said. I was running a tutoring program in the adult ed world, but all my trainings and workshops had been about test prep and essay structure and critical thinking. No one had never said anything about teaching reading.  

The man drew in a breath like he’d been struck, and exhaled, quietly.  There was a silence, the administrator staring expectantly at me, the man facing straight ahead, but looking at me sideways. 

It was not a noble decision. More like an acceptance of the thing that the two people in front of me were willing me to say. It was the easiest course of action, basically.  

“OK. I mean… I guess we can try to figure it out.”  

In that moment everything changed. I wouldn’t know it for a long time. For years it would feel like folly, like I was a fool on a fool’s errand making foolish choices, clearly wasting everybody’s time. And it wouldn’t just feel like this; it would, in actuality, be this.  We ran in place, grinding a deeper and deeper hole.

But right at that moment? It felt like an in-box problem had been solved. The administrator heaved a huge sigh of relief. “You’re an angel. Here’s his paperwork.” With that, she split. 

The man’s name was Clive. He was from Jamaica. He really couldn’t read. Like, not at all.