When I was a kid, both of my parents were high school teachers. I love them, and I thought that it was so cool that they were teachers. Over the years, they both got graduate degrees and changed careers. However, my parents affected my identity most as schoolteachers.
There has always been an academic feel about our home. My parents always, always read us books when we went to bed, just for fun, on long drives, when we were infants, when we were teenagers, and even now. Now we have a family Charles Dickens book club. Books were important to my family and they are important to me.
When I was 3 years old, my mom taught my older sister how to read while I was climbing the curtains behind the couch. I learned how to read and my sister did not. I figured out pretty quickly how useful reading could be. I started reading store signs and TV ads. I got so much more information just with those two things and I didn’t want to stop reading. I remember, when I was in pre-school, my teacher tested if I could read or not, which she had to do before I went to Kindergarten. She held up a note card with several different words on them. I didn’t want to go to Kindergarten because my sisters told me how awful it was (they were lying). In my 3-year-old head, if my teacher thought I couldn’t read, then I wouldn’t have to go to Kindergarten. So as she pointed to the word “bear,” I said “wolf.” Then when she pointed to “wolf,” I said “fox.” When she pointed to “fox,” I said “beer,” and so forth. I could read, but I was not very clever, and so went to Kindergarten.
From an early age, I started reading. I would read children’s encyclopedias long after my bedtime. My parents got them as a wedding present, and I loved them. There was one that was all about the Animal kingdom. In the back they had an index of all the animals they talked about, complete with illustrations and dimensions. I would take out the measuring tape to our living room just so I could see exactly how big these animals were. I read National Geographic magazines. We had a large collection of them. Up until the 80s, National Geographic was almost more like a travel magazine. I would read about all the exciting places around the world that they wrote about, and if I was too tired to read, I could just look at the pictures.
When I was in first grade, we moved to a different town. My new teacher literally thought I was mentally retarded because I was hyper, had a speech impediment and lied about everything. I even convinced her that I was from Japan for about two minutes. I wanted to read The Boxcart Mysteries. I’d already read a few and she had every single one! However, since I was “retarded” she had me reading Dick and Jane with the slow readers. This was especially frustrating because reading is what I really excelled at as a child. The other kids passed by me in math, arts and crafts, socializing, etc. Reading, though, was my own world. While other kids were still reading picture books, I was getting completely lost in novels. I was in a whole other world. Try getting lost in Dick and Jane. Mrs. Cardwell—for some reason I never liked her.
I don't think my parents liked her either. Most of the parents that teachers deal with aren't familiar with the way teachers work. Most of my teachers treated my parents this way. They also treated my parents like it was because of their bad parenting that I was such a "wild child," but I don't think anything is further from the truth. My parents raised us right. It's not their fault that I'm different from the other kids. My parents, in spite of their busy schedule made sure to spend lots of time with me. We shared a lot of good experiences.
My dad and I have a lot of things in common. One of these things is a desire for knowledge. Even when I was 3 and 4 years old, I wanted to learn as much as I could. In all reality, that is exactly who I am. I am a sponge. Just like a sponge soaks up water, I soak up as much information as I can, and I don’t let it go. Other people seem to learn things and then forget them later. I’ve never done that; I’ve never squeezed out the sponge. In second grade, we learned the countries of Africa as a class. Last year, I took an online quiz and I still knew all of them, except for Sierra Leone—and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I feel like information is my friend. When I forget information, it's like betraying that friend. Poor Sierra Leone.
Information, of course, is in books. Therefore, reading was the gateway for me to learn as much as possible, or to put it another way: the gateway to become who I am today. We had plenty of books at home: books about ducks, books about bats, books about Sweden, books about wars, books about Jesus Christ, books about science. Books were always my favorite gifts to get at Christmas (except maybe a certain train set).
Once I got into high school, the advantages and disadvantages of my sponge became apparent. The most valuable thing I had was the ability to learn. My peers, for the most part, seemed to struggle to learn the material and remembering it was even harder. I was different, and I was treated that way. A lot of my classmates ever since I started school resented the way I learned so easily and seemed to already know things. The teasing, name-calling and pranks were hard to bear. I felt really bitter about it for a long time, which made it even harder to fit in. But again, it has made me who I am. I was never in the “popular” crowd, but once I got to high school, I always had plenty of friends, which is probably because I’m funny.
Now that I’m an adult, I have no problem at all making friends. People like that I know a lot of things because it means I can relate to them. I can ask meaningful questions about people’s occupations, where they come from, what their degree involves, etc. because I already know about those things. It makes people feel like I know them when I know a lot about what they are involved in.
It's ironic, isn't it? The secret world of reading and information used to mark me as different and pushed me away from others. Now, though, that wealth of information is what connects me to others. I can be on the same plane as others. It's not just the facts anymore. The information in my head is a network that connects me to other people. I've reached the point where I've connected to enough characters in books, scientists in magazines, and politicians
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