She can read, she can read, she's ba-ad

I was sitting in the bathtub yesterday reading the back of the shampoo bottle and my first instinct was to turn it around on the shelf so I wouldn't have to read about my hair type and the amazing nature of my product.
But then I thought, what an amazing thing, the way I can read. The way I absorb the meaning of those combinations of little letters almost instantly. The way I cannot NOT read something in front of me.
Reading....a book, a newspaper, a blog. It might be near to an addiction for me, because I get a better than chocolate or caffeine rush from shutting out the world to a captivating turn of phrase.

I can't really comprehend what it would mean to be illiterate/ preliterate. Would my mind be me with out those symbols attached to every word?

And I wonder if it is analogous to how I never learned to read music. All of the notes are merely dots and bars and I've got the tune in my head but I could not tell you which mark is which sound.
This doesn't stop me from singing in the bathtub, but once the sound bounces off the porcelain it is gone.

I am wondering what I am missing by not knowing how to read.