Taking a New Route

        The custodians came through the door and made a beeline directly to our teacher’s desk.  They came into the classroom with three huge boxes of new books.  The books were titled “A Wrinkle in Time”.  It seemed a bit larger than what I was used to at the time, and I couldn’t help but feel anxious about when we were to begin reading it.  At nine years old, a book with over a hundred pages could do some serious damage to a child’s confidence.  Interestingly enough, I would have never thought that this book, which concerned traveling through dimensions to save a brilliant scientist, would forever influence my outlook on reading.  Hence, it helped me realize how great it felt to take a journey while reading a book.  Just the simple thought of traveling through dimensions to other worlds would get my mind running at a hundred miles per hour.  Amazingly, it kept me interested with each new word that came.  The pages kept flipping as if they were on cruise control, and the journey was effortless; “book-time” couldn’t have come any quicker.

Sophomore year, Hialeah Miami Lakes Senior High, 1995 - What had happened?  I couldn’t remember the last time I had read a book.  At this point in my life, I was moving fast and a huge book just seemed like too much.  I was going mach speed through school and reading a book from cover to cover wasn’t happening.  “Footnotes” & “Sparknotes” had taken over when it came to study time.  They gave me the information, raw and uncut.   I remember reading Clifford Footnotes the night before a test and smoking it the next day.  Those books made my life easier, and with their help, I graduated high school with a mediocre grade point average.  While I never claimed to be Einstein, I held my own.   

             Not reading the real thing usually handicaps you.  I would soon find out that it wasn’t my grades losing in this deal, it was me.  And truth be told, I’m about to graduate, and for the few classes that require reading novels, I use Footnotes or Sparknotes as my one and only resource.  A feeling of embarrassment and stupidity comes over me when I reflect on the past judgments I’ve made about reading.  All the imagination that combines with a great story makes an awesome experience, and I was missing out.

Twenty-nine Palms, CA, 21 yrs old- I deployed to the war in Iraq in 03’ as a US Marine.   During our tour, we stayed in an abandoned hotel turned Base of Operations.  In our hotel, the word was that a really good book was circulating around…a love story.  Not paying much thought to it, and certainly not looking for a romance novel, it magically appeared on my cot as I returned from patrol.   And after a month of old fishing magazines, “The Kiss” by Danielle Steele seemed worth the while to begin reading….  And Ta’ Da’, just as “A Wrinkle in Time” amazed me as a child; “The Kiss” took over every waking moment.  It was such a great book that I became one of its staunchest supporters at the firm base.  This book kick-started a yearlong relationship I had with Danielle Steele.  Who would have thought I’d love a good romance novel?

My years after the corps were spent hitting the pavement hard on my 18-wheeler.  Driving my semi up and down the east coast, visiting cities from Key West to Manhattan.  And in all the years I spent on the road, not a single book did I open.  The closest I got to an actual book was a Rand McNally Map book.  It’s the kind of book that anyone would mistake for an encyclopedia.   There were no books in my truck.

June 2008 - The president gave an announcement about a new GI Bill plan being offered to veterans as I drove down an interstate.  A plan that pays you to go to school is what they were talking about.  I knew that if I wanted to go back to school, this would be my time, and I’d have to become better at reading and writing.  The question was how would I do that since I’ve pushed to the side almost every book that has come my way for more than 20 years?  

FIU • Fall 2000-  Being unfamiliar with the registration process, I mistakenly enrolled in an upper level English course.  You can tell I was in the wrong class because everyone in there knew each other, they were all English majors.  When speaking to the professor after class, I can still remember her asking me if I thought I could handle it, since I had never taken a real English course before.  I’ve learned a few things in life.   I learned that if someone else can do it, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to do it as well.  And I wanted to be in this class.  I eventually learned that I loved reading novels and stories of the ocean.  Ironically, what helped me realize that I liked reading was a book.  It was the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”.

Knowledge is Power.  It took me over 30 years to realize this.