But I Didn't

When my newly defined family moved to Lawrence, I had already attended four schools. I was a year behind because I had failed first grade due to my inability to step across the classroom threshold, and then there was the principal's orders to my mother to remove her disruptive daughter from the premises and not come back. I don't know why I refused to sit down in my seat like a good little girl. Maybe it was due to the misrepresentation of what Mother and I were doing that morning: going for a walk. Just she and I would be spending quality time together, talking and strolling through the neighborhood at a leisurely pace, You know, doing what mothers and daughters do. I should have thought it strange that I had to wear a dress for our walk, but I didn't. I should have questioned why Mother wanted to spend alone time with me because we never did that, but I didn't. I should have asked what the hurry was because our stroll was more like a fast sprint, but I didn't. I was six and without the capacity to reason all that well. Our time together that morning didn't go as well as Mother had expected. It was all a trick and I was having none of it.

By the time I walked through the threshold of my seventh grade classroom at Belzer Junior High, I was thirteen and reading at a third grade level. I preferred sitting in the back of the class to avoid attention, and I hoped the teacher would pass me by when soliciting answers from the class.

The worst experience of all was when the teacher would have the class read from a book, each student standing up and reading the next paragraph when it became their turn. I counted ahead to my paragraph and hurriedly looked for words I didn't know so I could ask the student next to me. When I stood up to read, my performance was flawless, but I hated the deception.

It was the feeling of being different, inadequate, of being broken that I decided I was done with illiteracy. In our new house on Austin Drive, I had my own bedroom, so each night after dinner, I closed my door, opened a book and forced myself to read. Over and over and over I read until eventually I would begin to recognize certain words. Phonics was (or is it were?) not involved; it was rote learning: memorization based on repetition.  I refused to give up. I learned to read by reading. The progress was slow and several times I wanted to give up, but I didn't.