Read Between the Lines

It's amazing how similar my feelings about my world then, and my world now are. I've always had friends who were older than me, even as a child. When I was in the first grade Colinda was my oldest friend. She was a fourth grader who lived around the corner from my house. She had three brothers, and I always felt like she was stronger and knew more because of them. I learned how to play video games at Colinda's house, her brothers taught me how to throw a decent punch, if I needed to defend myself, and Colinda was the first person to teach me how to ride on the handle bars of a bike. In the life and times of a kid, these are all extremely important life lessons. Of course I haven't ridden a bike in at least thirteen years, I don't play video games anymore, and I can count on one hand how many times I've ever thrown a punch. Colinda did teach me an invaluable lesson, however, that I still use to this day. She taught me how to teach myself how to do things. You could call it responsibility, accountability, courage, initiative, or independence, whatever it is, it's the the thing that makes or breaks us in life. It's the difference between living and existing.

We were sitting in her garage, and she was reading a book. I always loved reading. I had a ton of Little Golden Books at home that I'd memorized from cover to cover, but I'd never seen a book like the one she was reading before. The words were very small and tightly spaced on the page. There were no pictures, so one page contained like a million words. Words I'd never seen before, some of them I'd heard in conversation, but I had no idea what they looked like on paper. I was fascinated. The most amazing thing to me however, was how fast she was reading silently I was floored! I thought she had to be the smartest person in the world. I sat there for at least an hour watching her turn page after page. She didn't even need to use her finger to follow along. When I finally left her house that night I felt something I'd never felt before: determination. I went home and took out my first grade English book. It was the most beautiful of all my school books. There was a huge frog or some green animal on the cover, and there were big, bold, streaks of blue and purple that looked sparkly and reflected the light, so it looked different depending on what angle it was in. I did my homework for the night, and then flipped back a few pages past the information that the teacher had already covered in class. I read about three extra stories and answered the reading comprehension questions that followed them, but that wasn't enough. It was too easy, and the words were still very big, not small and tightly spaced like the ones in Colinda's books. I went over to my bookshelf and pulled down all of my Little Golden Books. I began to read, but I started to get upset because these weren't good enough either. I already knew the stories by heart. I needed to learn something new.

Every evening that week I went to Colinda's house. I had expressed to her how much I loved her books and how fast she could read. So she began to read to me out loud, as I followed along, but I couldn't keep up. By the end of the week I was frustrated to tears. I'll never forget sitting on the steps to our house crying one evening when my mother came home from work. "What's the matter?" she asked me. "Did you fall down?" "Did you break something?" I shook my head no to both questions. "I can't read" I stammered to her through a flood of tears and a snotty nose. "You can read" she said, you get good grades in English class." "I've bought you plenty of books." "But I already know how to read those." I said. Unbeknownst to me, at the tender age of six, I understood the concept of learning; going beyond what you already know, challenging oneself to do something, or think of something you've never thought about before. It seems so simple, but so many times in life I have to remind myself of what I'm learning, and who the teacher is. Needless to say I taught myself how to read that summer. The following year I was a second grader taking fourth grade reading classes. I always finished first or second when we had to read silently, I was always called on the read out loud, and of course my grades were stellar.

I'm not sure exactly what brought about this memory, but it was the first thing on my mind this morning. Perhaps its my divorce, or the transitional state my life is in right now, mixed with the fact that frustration and tears are at an all time high. Maybe it's because I am thirsty for something new. Maybe its because its been awhile since I've read a really good book. It could be all of these reasons. I'm not sure of too much at this point in my life, but I know that regardless of my situation, at my core, I am that same little girl who taught herself how to read beyond a first grade level. I'm very proud of myself for that.