Creative Reader Liberated

I am a slow reader with terrible comprehension skills. It takes me at least four times longer to read anything than an average reader. I read every word as though I were reading aloud. For those who cannot relate, this is an insufferable way to read. A teacher once told me I have a reading disability: I am a "Creative Reader." (At least I felt better having a label for my problem.) As you might expect, I have loathed reading for most of my life. I used to avoid reading at all costs. Until my mid-twenties, I had never experienced "reading for pleasure."

In third grade (G/T program) I had to read a book (or was it sixth grade?) for some reading promotion at school where you get points for pages read (or something like that). I remember whiling away many painstaking HOURS one fine Saturday afternoon (in my dad's gold rocking chair that used to be my grandfather's chair) reading How to Eat Fried Worms. I HATED spending my Saturday that way! I can still remember how I ached with desire to be outside running barefoot on the hot pavement with my friends, playing "teenagers" or some such nonsense.

I remember the first time I sought out a cheater method (i.e., Cliff's Notes) of getting around reading something. I was expected to read some book called The Borrowers, which I believe was about tiny little people living in someone's house and taking their stuff. (Again, I can't remember if this was third grade G/T or sixth grade...) My family had a multi-volume set of books called The Junior Classics (or something like that) which contained ultra-condensed versions of children's novels. Amazingly, these volumes contained a tiny version of The Borrowers. I can still remember the smell of fresh cut grass all around me that springtime evening as I sat on the front porch trudging through the Junior Classics' watered-down version of that book. I think it was fourteen pages long, and I thought I'd never get to the end of it. Oh, it's all coming back to me now...it WAS third grade G/T, and I was expected to give an oral summary of the book in front of the class full of children far more gifted and talented than I. (I shiver with heeby-jeebies just thinking about it...) I was so impressed by Joe Bishop's project and report of The Westing Game (which years later Britt said was his childhood favorite). And someone did a neat diorama of The Wizard of Oz. Anyway, I have blocked most of the events of that day out of my mind but still bear the guilt of becoming a cheater-reader.

By high school, I had gotten very good at reading as much as I could manage, paying attention in class, taking thorough notes, and asking my reader friends all the right questions before quizzes. Remarkably, I got by with As and Bs in my high school English classes using said method. And I graduated #11 in my class of about 375. (This is shameful, of course.) So I was on my way to being a stellar college student.

I started college with the notion that English was my best subject (I loved every aspect except reading), ignoring the fact that I am a dreadfully poor reader. Suddenly I found myself lost in classes where I knew no one (and thus couldn't ask what happened in the assigned text for the day) and had no idea how to keep up. I still enjoyed the discussions and the dissection of the characters and themes, etc. and still had a knack for quality writing. By my fourth semester of beating my head against the wall of English literature, I was sinking in my chosen major and didn't know what else to do with my future. My short fiction professor held me after class one day and asked me why in the world I was an English major in the first place. (Well, actually a secondary education major w/ English specialization, to be technical.) He said I did the best job of writing essays about characters I knew nothing about of any student he'd ever taught. This skill did me little good as I delved deeper into the English major requirements. (That was about the same point in time when Britt forced me to admit that my passions have nothing to do with English literature. Persuant to this lengthy conversation, I turned to my love of "hearth and home" and became a Family & Consumer Sciences major. Best thing I ever did in college besides make Britt mine. That is neither here nor there.)

A few years ago, I compiled a list of books I wish I had finished in school, books displayed as "Summer Reading" at Barnes & Noble, books Oprah liked, books that sounded interesting to me at some point, books other people recommended, etc. I had already been in the habit of checking stacks of large print books out for my chair-bound grandmother, so during one of those library trips, I checked a stack out for myself too. And I opened one. And I read a while. And if I hated it, I put it down and tried another. And another. And eventually I liked one. And finished it. And another. And another. And I found that I was enjoying myself! And I would exclaim to Britt, "I finished it! I'm becoming a reader!" As long as I allowed myself the freedom to close a book I am not compelled to read by the end of the first chapter or so, then I was happy to taste new ones. And sometimes I laughed aloud or even cried. And I found out why so many of my friends enjoyed reading. It was liberating.

So why all this talk about reading? Well, I find that I read and read and read on the internet now sometimes (to the detriment of my blog it seems). I read about babies and child-rearing and nutrition and plants and I read other people's blogs to get ideas and then find that I'm hooked. I read whatever interests me. I often have a stack of books by my bedside table, most of them bearing some form of the word "pediatric" in them, but books of my choosing nonetheless. And I read. FOR PLEASURE. And I enjoy myself! I'm getting faster a little every year. And it doesn't feel like work anymore. And I don't have to think about doing it. I just do.

I'm a reader now!