Being a freshman in college now, it is frowned upon to take over a year, let alone even a few months to finish reading a general 150–300-page book. Looking back to my early years including middle school, I absolutely despised reading and learning how to write. I have grown up with dyslexia, with that reading as a young child was always just work, not enjoyment. Seventh grade my parents had hired a tutor specifically to help me with dyslexia and to teach me how to write and hopefully begin to enjoy reading. I couldn’t stand the thought of having a tutor. I thought it was embarrassing and it would do me no good to have even more homework and time outside of school devoted to just reading and writing. Back then I thought there would never be some storyline inside of a book that could inspire me more than a TV show or movie. Boy I was wrong.
My Tutor, Susan, had been very close with my best friend’s mom growing up. She had been introduced to my parents at one of the many barbecues my best friends’ parents hosted for the fourth of July. I had talked to her many times she was a sweat woman who was a third-grade teacher. When we started our lessons together, I thought I knew what to expect. She ripped me with a new one. I expected sitting at the kitchen table or going to the library, immediately to begin work, writing about stupid times from my past or reading boring history books for my up-to-date class required reading material. Instead, we met at her house. She had me sit down at the coffee table where we sat on the floor. When she began to pull out writing books, they were all colorful covers with stickers of flowers and puppies covered on the front. She let me open the first one to just look through, I got to choose what page we were going to work on and what I wanted to write about. I remember thinking to myself “I never get to choose what I want to write about”. It was a special first moment, I remember feeling like my brain and pencil were one for the first time. Of course, when we would review my work, we would correct my spelling and conjunctions.
I remember one day Susan had us meet in the neighborhood library. She had asked me, “when you want to watch a movie or you listen to a bedtime story, what genre is most easy to follow along with?”. At first, I thought nothing of it, it was only when she asked me to walk through the mystery youth section, I had realized why she asked me this question. My parents had simply been reading the same books to me sense I was ten. I would never choose to read anything in school because I felt everything assigned was dull and lifeless. This was the first time anyone had ever asked me what I wanted to read while approaching my mindset in a completely different direction. Growing up, my grandfather had constantly been reading books about WWII, mystery novels, 1950’s and 20’s detective stories and murder mystery. He would love to read his favorite moments from those books to me. I fell in love with learning about murder mystery, WWII and old detective novels.
As I had begun walking down the library aisle, I saw a collection of books that on their outside covers had created an image of a girl’s shadow figure from a flashlight against a wall. I pulled out one of the books. Nancy Drew Mystery Stories THE HIDDEN STAIRCASE by Carolyn Keene. The title was written in big bright neon letters. I took the book back to the table with me and Susan had put our things down at. I sat down and told her that I was interested in seeing what it was about. The book was a hard cover; it reminded me of how my grandpa would always read me books with hard covers. I had turned the first page, when I tried to start reading out loud, I struggled mixing sentences. Susan pulled a bookmark that had a see through pink stripped line in the middle of it out of her pencil bag and placed it on the first chapter’s sentence. I had begun to read and as each sentence moved further down on the paper, the bookmark followed.
I will forever remember how for the rest of that particular week I could not put that book down. The bookmark had changed my pace and focus while the storyline of Nancy Drew’s hidden staircase continued to intrigue me. Reading Nancy Drew as a young girl will always be vital to who I am. I felt connected to the character she became, and it helped me decide my future career path that I am moving forward on today.
Leave a Reply