A third grade boy had won a medal as the best reader in class. Puffed with pride, he boasted to the maid at home, “Let’s see if you can read as well as I can, Consuelo.”

The good woman took the book, looked at it closely, and finally stammered,

“Why, Billy, I don’t know how to read.”

Proud as a peacock, the little fellow ran into the living room and fairly shouted to his father:

“Dad, Consuelo doesn’t know how to read and I – only eight years old – got a medal for reading. I wonder how she feels, looking at the book she cannot read.”

Without a word, his father went over to the bookshelf, took down a volume, and handed it to the boy, saying,

“she feels like this”

The book was in Spanish and Billy could not read a line of it.

The boy never forgot that lesson.

Whenever he feels like boasting he quietly reminds himself,

“remember, you can’t read Spanish”

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from the book “1000 Stories” by Fr. Frank Mihalic SVD