Says my names really jean louise bullfinch that i got

says my name’s really Jean Louise Bullfinch, that I got swapped when I was born and I’m really
a-”
(15) Miss Caroline apparently thought I was lying. “Let’s not let our imaginations run
away with us, dear,” she said. “Now you tell your father not to teach you any more. It’s best to
begin reading with a fresh mind. You tell him I’ll take over from here and try to undo the
damage-”
“Ma’am?”
“Your father does not know how to teach. You can have a seat now.”
“I mumbled that I was sorry and retired meditating upon my crime. I never deliberately
learned to read, but somehow I had been wallowing illicitly in the daily papers. In the long hours
of church-was it then I learned? I could not remember not being able to read hymns. Now that I
was compelled to think about it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to
fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of
shoelaces. I could not remember when the lines above Atticus’s moving finger separated into
words, but I had stared at them al the evenings in my memory, listening to the news of the day,
Bills to Be Enacted into Laws, the diaries of Lorenzo Dow- anything Atticus happened to be
reading when I crawled into his lap every night. Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to
read. One does not love breathing.
I knew I had annoyed Miss Caroline, so I let well enough alone and stared out the
window until recess when Jem cut me from the covey of first-graders in the schoolyard. He
asked me how I was getting along. I told him.
“If I didn’t have to stay I’d leave. Jem, that damn lady says Atticus’s been teaching me to
read and for him to stop it-”
“Don’t worry, Scout,” Jem comforted me. “Our teacher says Miss Caroline’s introducing
a new way of teaching. She learned about it in college. It’ll be in all the grades soon. You don’t
have to learn much out of book that way- it’s like if you wanta study cows I-”
“Yeah Jem, but I don’t wanta study cows, I-”
“Sure you do. You hafta know about cows, they’re a big part of life in Maycomb
County.”
I contented myself with asking Jem if he’d lost his mind.
“I’m just trying to tell you the new way they’re teachin’ the first grade, stubborn. It’s the
Dewey Decimal System.”
____