Reading is easy, and reading is fun—but only for other kids. Not for you.
For you, words double, fracture, and run right off the page before you have time to
read them. You go to ocular therapy twice a week to learn how to corral words onto the
page and spend hours in a dark room staring at a beam of light. It doesn’t seem to work.
You’ve been in the lowest reading group since you were old enough to notice that
teachers were splitting kids into groups. You’ve accepted that words are wild animals and
your inability to tame them will keep you in the “fun group” or the “go at your own pace
group.” You protect your little ego with the flimsy explanations adults have given you
over the years about the difference between reading speed and reading aptitude. You tell
yourself that the ocularly typical kids are no better than you are and that you’re special
for knowing the word “ocular” at all. This year, third grade, the rift between the
“advanced group” and “fun group” becomes painfully obvious. The bookshelf for
advanced kids is filled with hardback books two inches thick, with inside covers
describing complex characters, and teeming with all those words you can never seem to
catch. The fun section, on the other hand, has books made of cardboard so toddlers can
teethe on them. Your teacher gives the class five minutes to pick a book from their
respective sections to read for homework. Kids shout, holler, and fight over books. You
are not one of these kids. You stick to the back lacking the enthusiasm to even pick a
book at random. When the five minutes are almost over and most of the other students
have taken their seats, a book catches your eye: The Secret Garden, it’s glossy spine
sticking out slightly on the top shelf -- the advanced shelf. You reach up and grab it; at
the moment you aren’t fully sure why, but once you sit at your desk, it somehow feels
right. At home, you will not be rushed or distracted. You will take your time to pin every
word to the page, read them, and prove that you have the aptitude of an advanced reader.
When Mom notices The Secret Garden in your backpack after school, it feels
even more right. Your smile grows wider and wider as she tells what a good choice you
have made and that she’s glad you’re challenging yourself. After that shower of
positivity, you rush to show the book to Dad. While Mom’s opinion matters to you
greatly on many subjects, Dad is the reigning authority on reading. Nothing rivals his
love for reading except maybe your love for him, and you know he wants you to love
reading just as much as he does. While your sight has improved, your love for
reading has lagged. You blame it on the boring and simple books filled with
weakling words that are easily caught. Only runt-of-the-litter words are offered to you:
The Worst Cowgirl in the Wild West of Words. You aim to change your title when you
triumphantly drop The Secret Garden in Dad’s lap. After explaining your choice to him,
he is overjoyed. He too is glad you are taking the challenge. He asks you to analyze the
book for meaning and discuss it with him as you read through it. Your parents were far
more apathetic about the juvenile books you read in the past, and their current excitement
confirms that you made the right choice. Mom and Dad, as an almost nightly ritual, sit on the bed and read together
. They often invite you to read with them but you are usually
disruptive to their quiet reading environment when your simple books lose your
interest. That is all going to change tonight. The Secret Garden in hand, you march into
their bedroom and nestle yourself in between your parents, ready to love reading, ready to
show them that you love reading.
You flip to the creamy first page of the book, and, having skipped the introduction
so that it looks like you’ve already made progress, you look like a real reader. The spine
of the book delicately placed on your knees, you feel a shock of excitement run up your
spine. As you look down at chapter one, the words seem smaller than you’ve ever seen
before. You decide it won’t be a problem and bring the book closer to your face. Just as
the words begin to go into focus, they vanish. Your heart sinks as the words double and
dance right off the page. You look up from your book to your parents; Dad is already
immersed in his book, but Mom looks back at you and smiles. That smile motivates you,
and you return to the pages. You focus hard and the words return. You begin to read, but
as you go, it gets harder. Tilting your head to one side seems to make the words stay in
their pens. Then when that isn’t enough you close one eye, but even that one canted eye
can’t make the words take orders. All of this work has only brought you to page three.
The meager progress seems impossible. It’s humiliating. You don’t love reading. You
can’t. How could you like this?
You don’t want to tell them though. You start turning the page every once in
awhile without reading. Your dad jokes that you’re reading very quickly and asks if
you’re skimming. You freeze and say yes but that you’re going to go back to actually
reading now. You stay on that one page for a while. You then look to the side and begin
to keep track of how fast your parents turn their pages and devise a system. When Dad
turns the page, wait fifteen seconds and then turn yours. If Mom turns her page, within
those seconds start the counting over and turn your page fifteen seconds later. You are
proud of this system; it took a great deal of trial and error for no one to question your
pace. Now everything seems normal; everything is normal. Everything is perfect here
between Mom and Dad, in the warmth of their bed, reading.
My imitation of reading over time evolved into actual reading, but for years the
act of reading was still a kind of imitation. My ocular issues robbed me of discovering
my own reasons to read, so I found reasons outside of myself. Reading felt pointless, and
not reading felt shameful, which left me in a Catch 22. My drive to read was entirely
external which left me empty. I didn’t find internal motivation until I was much older and
wasn’t expecting to.
You have some free time after school, a rarity considering your sophomore year
of high school is in full swing. All you have left for homework is reading a couple
chapters of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and you know your teacher won’t check annotations,
so it will take no time at all. With the prospect of binge-watching Buffy the
Vampire Slayer in the back of your mind, you crack the matte spine, hold the pulpy pages
in hand, and begin to read. You have a rather ugly copy of the book with extremely brittle
covers and pages poorly pasted together. The words line up for you, row by row, crystal
clear, and perfectly tame. There is no novelty in this, clarity in language has become the
norm, so the book lays like a dead thing in your lap. With each page you read to your
amazement, both you and the book come to life. You finish the pages you were assigned
and continue on in the book; with each passing word you are enveloped, entranced, and
invigorated. You find sanctuary from the stress of everyday life as Winston and Julia
find sanctuary in their apartment above the antique store. Each time you read you do it
without thinking about others. You are reading for yourself, and for the first time, you
know what reading is.