Literate and Ungrateful
“Good job! The English language is hard for us Smiths.”
That was a recent text from my dad in response to a positive critique of my writing I shared with him to help him feel as though his hard earned money to help me get an education is going to good use. “Hard” just seems like a strong word to me though. It may be a difficult subject for him, a guy who is more interested in how a computer works than analyzing diction in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but it never felt very hard in my experience. It wasn’t hard for me when I was speaking in conversation at the mere age of 12 months old, or when I was confusedly accepting the award for best student in the English department in eighth grade when all I did was exchange notes with my middle-school boyfriend in that class. In fact, it has always come pretty easy to me.