My Uncle Rick was infamous for mispronouncing words. Sometimes it was a classic common misuse - “death” in place of “deaf” - but some words were uniquely his own. A chef became a “cheft”. Bratwurst was abbreviated to “brocks”. He might call me up and ask me about a new show on “The Netflick” (which I actually prefer, and have wholly adopted), or whether I’d seen “Van Halen” yet (“It’s the vampire hunter one with the guy who played Wolveree.”)

And so forth.

This was a constant source of amusement. In fact, it still is (albeit with less frequency and slightly-moistened eyes, these days).

…but here’s the Paul Harvey: Uncle Rick was illiterate.

I don’t know a lot about his childhood, but my understanding is that he dropped out of school some time around the sixth grade (circa the mid-‘50s). While he was unable to read, this man was not at all “dumb”. What he lacked in formal education he more than made up for in life experience. In particular, anything mechanical was his jam. He was the type of guy who could take apart an engine and put it back together without glancing at a manual.

He just never picked up the “knack” of being able to read. I recall him making attempts when I was a kid - taking adult literacy classes at the library and suchlike. It just never “stuck”.

So…how would you pronounce words in the absence of some understanding of “what sounds the letters make” when you read them? …and how might folks around you go about correcting your pronunciation if they can’t use a fundamental tool like “It makes a ‘th’ sound…as in ‘t-h’”? From experience? Mostly, they’d just be laughing at you.

So it goes.

I didn’t put this together until I was in my 20s. It was a fairly profound moment, for me - an “Ohhhhhhhh!” sort of thing.

Anyhow, a few years before he passed I bought him a Chromebook. Well, technically I bought a Chromebook for my aunt. It didn’t work out for her…but he took to it almost immediately.

Go figure.

He couldn’t read, but he could hunt-and-peck type letters into a search bar and figure it out from there. This led to equal parts pain and hilarity, from a tech support perspective; in particular, the hunt for a popular Vin Diesel movie led to a whole-ass discussion about clearing browser history “so the kids won’t stumble upon it if they’re playing with my Chromebook.”

We’d talk for hours about all the cool shit he’d discovered and stumbled across and learned. It was mostly YouTube videos about things like motorcycles and WWII and fishing. But all the same: this man could use a computer - use the Internet - at near-zero cost, and without being able to read.

This is fucking incredible to me.

Technology, computers, the Internet - I’ve spent my career around-and-amongst these things. I know how the sausage is made, and frankly over time that’ s had the effect of increasingly turning me into a Luddite. I reckon I’ve Seen Some Shit that makes me want to fuck off into the woods and never look back (and I’m not even that old).

…but a 75-year-old man helped me understand the value of all this bullshit tech, helped me grok why it’s valuable, maybe even helped to boost my level of hope about the goddam Internet and whatever its goddam purpose is ultimately supposed to be.

This “uneducated” man educated me. Just like he always did.

RIP, Uncle Rick. I love you.