What? Me Read?

Some people might be shocked to know that I wasn’t the best of students in high school. Others who knew me back in those days have been shocked to discover that I taught high school English for thirty years. Sometimes I’m amazed that I taught, especially when I consider the reading I did in my younger years.

I’ve always been a slow reader. I contribute part of that fact to a borderline OCD condition. I always found it impossible to skip even a single “a,” “an,” or “the.” Doing so seemed to be cheating. Even when I tried to skip words, I eventually go back to where I’d started to re-read the passage.

I recall SRA reading classes in eighth grade. Part of the training in it was to learning how to skim. I took another course for speeding up my reading in college, but it didn’t work either. I never got the hang of skimming. Probably my ADHD characteristics kicked in. Before I knew it had happened, my mind would be wondering, and I’d failed to comprehend even a single idea that the words before me had presented.

As a younger person, I found reading to be boring. Rarely did I find materials that I enjoyed. Reading also meant that I had to sit still, something that drove me nuts. What was more appealing to me was being outside playing. Being active beat the heck out of allowing my mind to take me to imaginary places and situations.
In elementary school, I remember reading only a couple of books. One was polished off during a rainy vacation week in the mountains. The title escapes me, but the storyline dealt with people riding on a bus to somewhere. The second book I remember was Big Red. Yep, it was the book about an Irish Setter. Disney later came out with a movie based on the book. I loved that book because dogs were, and still are, my favorite animals. I wrote a glowing report on that book and handed it in with pride.

In high school, I managed to tackle a few more books and plays. I read Romeo and Juliet and Julius Ceasar. In junior English, I read more than I’d ever done before. Mrs. Anderson was a good looking teacher whom I wanted to impress, so I pushed through the books. Rebecca was all right, but reading it cemented my dislike for historical romances. The Scarlet Letter made no sense at the time, and the wording was an absolute nightmare for a country boy from East Tennessee. One of my favorite books of all time was A Separate Peace. It spoke to me and other teen boys who weren’t athletic or popular. Lord of the Flies also caught my fancy; I identified with the character Piggy because of my weight but probably was more like Ralph. Other books I muddle through included classics like The Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye. While I got the story line, I never understood the main characters and their whining about life.

I college, I never read anything that wasn’t assigned. Part of the reason was that I had no time. The other was I was more interested in trying to find female companionship. Until my last year when I met Amy, I’d been as well off plopping my fanny in a chair and reading War and Peace and other so-called great books; I sure didn’t spend any time with females those first three years.

I graduated from college and became a high school English teacher. Before long, I was teaching composition classes. That entailed reading as many as ninety student essays each week. That was in addition to the materials from textbooks. For years, I read NOTHING for pleasure. I chose, instead, to rest my weary eyes from all the strain of trying to read the chicken scratching and grammatical mistake-laced sentences of my charges.

These days, things have changed. I’ve enjoyed reading. I pick up a book, and if it grabs my interest in the first few pages, I tackle it and don’t put it down until I’ve completed it. Most times I can’t give the title or author of a book I’ve read. I don’t care what either is. If I like the book, I read it; if not, I chuck it. I read for entertainment, not necessarily for knowledge.

Now I have a Kindle, and it makes reading even better. It’s especially nice not to fight holding back pages. Most of all, I appreciate being able to increase the font size to accommodate my tired eyes. My consumption of reading material has swelled with the device. Maybe I read so much more now because I can sit still for longer periods of time. I don’t have a great desire to run the roads as I did as a teen. With age come changes in interests, that and a reduction in energy. Reading is less strenuous.