I was never the kid to pick up a book on a dark, rainy day
or the teenager to lay down on a recliner at the beach and poke her nose into
the newest Harry Potter book. I could not even finish any of the required
readings for school. I would always rather be jumping in puddles, digging in
the sand and sometimes dancing.
My brother read all time when we were growing up, and mom
loved a good mystery novel. There was no reason why I did not like to read. To
me, there was always something else I could do, something that required more
energy, more fun. Even in school when we had ‘reading period’, I was that kid
you see in the movies looking out the window at the jungle gym, pretending she was
climbing a mountain, until the teacher catches her day dreaming and sends her
to time out. I always blamed it on how
slow a reader I was, the teachers thought maybe I had a learning disability.
Let us take a trip back in time. I am sure everyone remembers
the time in elementary/middle school when they had some sort of reading log. In
my school, it was a reading journal; each week we had to pick out a book from
the library or from home, log how much we read each night, have our parents
sign off, and at the end of each week we wrote a paragraph about that book (or
our parents would write and we would dictate).
My standards for picking a book never consisted of the story
it held, rather the picture that was on the front cover. I never read the back
of the books or the inside flap or the first chapter. I never cared who wrote
the book, as long as the cover was interestingly illustrated or the title was
mysterious. The more interesting the cover or title, the easier it was for me
to make up a story.
Every night I sat in the red rocking chair, in the corner of
my living room with Blanky and ‘read’ my book. I was always a very imaginative
kid, I always loved to make up stories and write crazy random things. My
favorite subject was writing, always, even throughout high school. It was near fifth grade that my mom started to
realize that the stories I would tell her about the books I was reading were
not plausible. Sitting in the corner of my living room, I never read the books.
I would look at the title and I would look at the front cover and I would make
up a story, something interesting, sometimes even complex and above my years.
My mom thought there was something mentally or learning
wise, wrong with me, as did my teachers. They thought maybe I had trouble reading
the books, so I would make up things that seemed to fit, but never really did.
The truth was I really just enjoyed making up the stories more than reading
them. The first book my mom realized I did not actually read was Sammy Keyes and the Search for Snake Eyes. I
remember the title only because my mom tells this story all the time. I told my
mom that Sammy was in search of the father that she never knew. She called him
snake eyes because all she had was a picture of his arm that had a snake on it,
and she could not remember his face. Going off the picture on the front cover,
that story made a lot of sense. Me being me, I could not let that be the whole
story. I added, that the mother was murdered by ‘Snake Eyes’ in front of Sammy,
leaving Sammy to fend for herself at the age of 4, living on her own on the
streets until she could finally find ‘Snake eyes’ and get vengeance. Now, that
sounds somewhat plausible until you look at the audience of the book, fifth
graders, and the reality that none of that made any sense together. My mom
decided to take it upon herself to read the book and see if in reality this was
really what happened. Surprise, surprise! That is not what happened. How a
fifth grader (me) came up with that story is beyond my understanding (may have
had something to do with all the Law and
Order and CSI I watched). Not
only was that story a little grown up for a 10 year old, but it was also a
little morbid.
Why am I saying all this?
Recently I have become more and more inclined to read. I enjoy
it and I crave it. I have realized the reason I never liked to read was not
because I could not read, or because I was too slow. Those were excuses that I
used to get out of doing something I was always expected or forced to do. Most
people use reading to send themselves into a fantasy world; to surround them in
a place that can never exist or does not exist. I never had a problem doing
that, if anything my world is too much of a fantasy.
Everywhere I went, and
even still go, I create stories that probably are not true, but to me they are
better than reality. A couple walking down the street, I can create their whole
life in two seconds. From the cover of a book I make up my own story. I never
needed fiction, or fantasy books because I preferred my own fantasies. I
thought I was always expected to read fiction, because that is what every else
read and loved.
As I grew up I found why I never liked to read. I use
reading to answer my questions. Maybe they are not answered simply or easily,
but to me I am looking for answers to questions I cannot answer myself and
fiction books never did that. I realized that I like to read, love it even, just
non-fiction. Non-fiction can happen, has happened, may even happen to me.
Biographies, auto-biographies, memoirs- they all tell the story, the true story
of a life once lived and questions of someone else’s, once answered. I read a
memoir on Bonnie and Clyde, written by Clyde Burrows sister in-law, Blanche,
when I graduated high school because I found it fascinating that people who
were capable of love, the kind of love Bonnie and Clyde had, could do what they
did.
This is not meant to be deep, but my revelation about
reading taught me a lot more than why I never wanted to read. I am not my mom,
and I am not my brother. I am not screwed up, and I do not have a learning
disability. I know how to read and I now even know how to enjoy it. I have an
imagination for fiction, I did not need to read Harry Potter to know the story,
I created my own story to that cover and that title. I read for answers about
life, and those I seem to find in true stories. I like to read, but I had to
find my own place within the reading world. I followed everyone else and that
just was not me.
When someone tells you, you cannot do something or even you
make excuses for yourself, it just means you just cannot do it everyone else’s
way, you have to find your own path.
Albert Einstein said something that I realize is an important lesson to understand, whether you are that kid who is not quite the reader every one wants them to be, or just the kid who is not the best at sports-
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
I was behind my brother in a lot of things, I am not the same as my mom with a lot of things, but I am myself and I am just starting to realize that that is okay.
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