I’ve enjoyed Reader’s
Digest for well over forty years. I don’t remember the first issue I picked up,
but I do know our stepmother had a subscription. One time, I picked up her copy
and glanced through it, and enjoyed it so much that I got in the habit of
reading it regularly.
Back then I rarely read
all the articles but I did read all the humor sections and I’d read an
interesting article or two. The “drama in real life” or a condensed story. I
first read James Herriot in a Reader’s Digest magazine condensed story.
For years I just read my
stepmother’s copies and when I wasn’t in the house for college etc. I just waited
until I got back home then skimmed through all the past issues I could find.
Not long after I got
married, I got my first subscription and I’ve had it ever since.
I was still only reading
the parts that interested me. I’m not even sure when I started reading more but
eventually, the Reader’s Digest coming in meant I was spending at least a day
consuming it from cover to cover.
As the magazine got
lighter (they print fewer pages in each addition now) I was able to read
through them in less and less time. Now, I don’t spend a solid block of time
reading it but the amount of time I need to consume each issue is only two or
three hours depending on how “heavy” their articles are.
When I first started
reading it, I might glance at the “Word Power” section and maybe spend a few
minutes trying to get the correct meaning but often it meant that I had to “peak”
at the answers. But I got older I was finding I needed to peak less often so I
started marking my guesses and then seeing if I got those I guessed at correct.
Eventually, I got to
where I was marking (or now that I have a digital subscription, writing down)
all my responses then turning to the answers and seeing how I did. As a rule, I
miss three or four of them though I do remember a few times missing six. There
aren’t many times that I missed less than three nor more than five so I was
always “middle of the pack” by their score chart.
I’ve always felt I was doing
pretty well since I only have an average vocabulary, despite living with a living,
breathing, walking, talking dictionary for all those years. (I mean Jacki did
try to increase our vocabulary but I never bothered to retain anything I wasn’t
using regularly.)
So what brought all this
up?
I was reading my most
recent issue of Reader’s Digest and finally got to the last pages where “Word
Power” is. I read the caption first.
Oh, great. Science. Since
that isn’t my strongest subject, I figured my limited knowledge in that
department wasn’t going to help my final score. Even the proclamation that the words
were also used outside of labs didn’t boost my confidence.
First word. It’s easy. Who
doesn’t know that?
Second word. Well, duh.
Okay, they should get
harder as we go.
Third word. Really. You’re
going to make it that easy?
I continued. For each
word, I either knew the answer or it was super easy to figure it out from the
available choices, as in only one made sense. Then I got to one that stumped me
a bit because I knew one meaning of the word, but it has nothing to do with the
scientific use of the word and I wasn’t sure which of the choices to pick. I
could make a case for all the possible answers being correct so I made a guess,
knowing I was probably wrong because my rate of correct guesses is pretty low. The
last few words I was sure I knew the meaning of.
Now I was really curious
about the outcome because I had only questioned one answer. I was certain I
knew the other answers, but I’d been wrong before.
I turned the page and checked
my answered one by one circling each answer on my paper that I’d gotten
correct. As I circled I was thinking, see I knew that, or that was easy to
figure out.
Then I got to the one I
did guess at. Guess what. I was right.
The outcome?
For the first time in my
life, I got a full 15 correct answers. It has got to be the easiest Word Power
yet. Either that or I know a great deal more “science” words than I thought.
Smile. Make the day a
brighter day.
