A friend said to me the other day “Mahilig ka talaga sa
libro noh?” upon seeing me carrying my new book “Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour
Bookstore”. I wanted to say yes but I
couldn’t for some reason. So I just
joked around and said I just love carrying them to look smart.
I spend most of my paycheck on books and lately, skincare
stuff, but I can’t really say I love books or like reading. Don’t get me wrong, I read everything that I
buy but I have to admit that there are some that I don’t get to finish. Why? Coz some of them are hard to read.
I’m a late bloomer in a lot of ways and it includes
reading. My mom’s a teacher and I
remember her getting so frustrated with me coz I was already in grade 2 (8yrs
old.) but I still could not read even simple words. I remember it was apple that made her smack
the table and walk out. My mom was a
patient woman (I said was coz she died when I was in grade 3), but grade 2 was
a really trying time for us. It was the
year my principal said my family might want to consider transferring me to
another school because of my lack of social skills. (Aside from my 2 friends, my cousin, and
neighbor, I almost never spoke with anyone, not even teachers. Whenever girls
in class would invite me to eat with them, I would but I don’t take part in
conversations. When I’m called to recitation, I would just whisper the answer
to whoever was seated beside me. And
when the taught us how to order/buy stuff from the canteen, I just pointed and
said please. I think that was what got
me in trouble. They probably thought I
needed to go to a special school. I was
just extremely shy towards people I’m not familiar with. I wasn’t new in school but coz of my health
condition, I wasn’t able to spend a lot of time in class during kinder, prep
and grade 1. ..but that issue was history as soon as I started grade 3.) Back
to reading. Our English teacher, made us
memorize 10 words a day and we had spelling quizzes during class. I using my palm as a scratch paper trying to
spell queen and got humiliated by a boy in class for it. You might be wondering
how I got thru grade school and always ended up in section A. I was really good in math, science and
religion. I also had a really good
memory. I can remember things that
teachers say and write on the blackboard exactly as they wrote it or said it.
Just don’t make me read the words and I’m totally fine. You can tell me to
write a certain letter and I can do it. If you give the meaning verbally, I can
figure out the word for it, I can try to write it but you might think you’re
looking at an html code. But it’s kinda weird when it comes to jumbled letters.
Do you know that exercise when the teachers would jumble the letters and have
you figure out what the word is? I was pretty good at that. I remember when I
was in grade 3 and our teacher divided us into teams and had us compete on
who’ll get the most words correctly. Everyone was surprised, especially my
teacher, when I was able to unjumble the word “stranger” which at that time was
still a stranger to us. Thank you Sesame Street for teaching kids not to talk
to strangers. I didn’t only had problems
reading in English, I also had the same problems in Filipino (my first
language), I was just better in faking it since I was fluent in the language.
Teachers and my family just thought I was having a hard time spelling even if
Filipino words are spelled the way it’s said.
I started getting better when I was in grade 6. We had a
teacher in grade 5 who made us read books and do oral summaries of them. I guess she understood my problem. She asked us to read books that were popular
at that time (Hardy boys, Nancy Drew and Sweet Valley high) but she also gave
me English and Filipino comics to read.
She told me to read the words and if I can’t figure it out, to stare at
the pictures to get an idea what’s going on.
By the time I reached grade 6, I can figure out most sentences but I’m 4
times slower than my classmates and I can’t read without saying what I’m
reading. My reading improved every year
but I never got into reading till we started learning mythology and Edgar Allan
Poe in 3th year. By that
time, I can read like everybody just at a slower pace. Everytime I tried reading at their pace, it
was kinda like speed reading. My eyes
would only catch key words which was fine unless we have to recite what we were
reading.
I started to like reading when we started Edgar Allan Poe in
3rd year coz they allowed us to give different interpretations of
his work. Then we also studied a bit of Greek
mythology, I got hooked after that. It was like being transported to a
different world. My imagination was more
vivid than ever. I’ve always had a wild
imagination. It was wild enough to give
me sleepless weeks after I’ve watched a horror movie and to make me fall in
love with a fictitious character. I’ve
started enjoying reading as well as writing my own stories from that time. I even remember exchanging stories with a
friend. But aside from novels/books prescribed for book reviews and The Firm,
which my dad told me to read, I’ve never really read any novel till I got into my
junior year in college. Most novels a
thick and I’m not a fast reader so I still avoided non-school related
books.
When I was a junior in UP, I roomed up with a high school
friend, Raia. She was an English major and she introduced me to bookstores and
hording novels. She would always buy 3
or 5 books aside from the ones she orders online and she reads all of
them. We had another friend and my roommate
since freshman year, Amy, who was also into books. I kinda felt out of place
whenever they’d start reading but it didn’t last long. Raia
suggested that I read her new book “Sofie’s Choice” coz I was taking philosophy
that semester. She said that it can help
since I wouldn’t even look at my Philo book.
Then she suggested another one Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
and I collected the whole series after that.
The 3 of us lived together of less than a year and I stopped after that
till Harry Potter came. That’s when I
realized my growing fondness reading.
Since mythology and Edgar Allan Poe (and The firm), I’ve always been
taken to another world/life very different from my own and I enjoyed being
there but it also scared me. It scared
me coz even after reading them, it felt like I’m getting stuck in their world
imagining what it could be like if I was the main character and what might
happen if things different from the story happened and what they would do after
the story has ended. Being with Raia and Amy taught me that it’s ok to be like
that. It’s normal if you really like
what you’ve read.
Today, I still can’t read as fast as other people and I
still have days where in I totally can’t read (Yes, there are still days that
words are just a bunch of meaningless letters to me and it’s scary…a friend
said that I probably have cognitive issues) which is why I can say I love books
and reading. At 35, reading is still a
struggle for me (I don’t even proof read my blog entries haha). So no, I don’t think I really like books, I
just can’t resist the worlds within.
PS
For those who know me and don’t know my reading issue, now
you know why I have staring moments at work.
I’m not really in deep thought, I’m just trying to figure out what I’m
looking at hahaha.
And those who have kids who are having difficulty reading,
give them a comic book or tell them stories from books, it might help.
I might start doing book reviews but it would not be as good
as others (it might even be weird) but I hope you guys would enjoy it.
