As I stared at the page for nearly an hour now, I still couldn't decode the symbols on the page. They blurred now and then as my eyes tried to focus on a group of them. All these petite curved and straight lines were everywhere I looked. People called them “words” and “letters.” I called them big headaches. Joan, my tutor, quietly sat next to me and watched me struggle yet another night, as she asked me to read the page. She said the book was called “The Little Engine That Could.” She told me, with her help, I could too. A 34 year old man could read? Maybe if he hadn't been homeless and went to school the past 30 years. Here I sat, John Short, at 34 years old, just now learning how to read.