Goodbye Don

Sorry I'm late again this week. I was looking through some old notebooks this morning for some story ideas. And I found a little nonfiction piece I'd written about reading.

Don was my enemy. Every day I went to my first grade classroom in the old elementary school. We would talk about the ducklings we raised. We made pinch-pots in art class. We added and subtracted on the dusty green chalkboard. And I fought Don.

Don and Nan, they were friends and fellow conspirators in torturing me. Together they saw cats, ran after dogs and hugged dads. I just didn't care about Don's tree and Nan's shoe. And yet my teacher insisted reading was fun.

Every night my mom read me stories about meek griffins(1), and families of bears(2). My sister told me stories about an Anne with an "e" and red hair(3). My brothers talked about mice that could "eat with all four paws" and otters that fought epic battles(4). But me! I was left with Don and Nan and their dog named Spot.

My mom must have laughed when she saw me reading The Scarlet Letter. There I was in my hideous sweatpants, laying on the couch, my blanket pillowing my head and my sister's assigned book held above my face, as if reaching for the sky. There I was, reading, "the," "and," "if," the sight words I knew. There were no "Dons" in the whole chapter. And I kept reading. It was long and tiring and with only those few words I didn't understand much, but I felt there must be something. Something deeper. Something better in that book. It was huge. There must have been a reason for it. (In high school I read it again with a few more vocabulary words under my belt. I was right.)

And yet, everyday I went back to Nan and Don seeing a tree. The cat in the tree.

My teacher put me in the stupid group. The reading group for dummies. Of course no one called it that, but we all knew it anyway. But what did I care. I was in the smart group where we added apples and subtracted oranges. I cared more about apples then I did about Nan. I was solving mysteries.

One day everything changed. I don't even remember how, but I got a copy of The Boxcar Children. Suddenly I had new friends. Friends that a decade and a half later I can still remember. Henry was brave, Jesse was capable, Violet was sweet, and Benny was joyful. These siblings were close, like my own family. They were happy, and adventurous. People changed and things happened. It was a new world. With that book Don and Nan were vanquished and forgotten.

By third grade I tested at an 8th grade reading level. Why didn't anyone tell me learning to read didn't have to be boring.

(1)The Pinkish, Purplish, Bluish Egg by Bill Peet

(2)The Berenstain Bears by Stan and Jan Berenstain

(3)Anne of Green Gables by L M Montgomery

(4)The Redwall Books by Brian Jacques