When Reading Almost Ruined Me

by Matt Pilachowski ’98

I met reading head on in elementary school. It was stronger than I was, and I had to struggle to keep up with my friends. After about a year, my teacher and the reading specialist decided to put me into a special reading class.

Every day when reading period came around, I was segregated from the rest of my friends. When the bell sounded, I was transformed into a different person in their eyes. No words were exchanged as they headed to the back of the room and I gathered my things and headed out the door. I was deformed for an hour.

There were many battles between reading and me in elementary school, but the most damaging one took place in third grade. Twice a week we would spend a period in the library learning about the card catalog and the Dewey decimal system. Sometimes we had free rein of the library to read whatever books we wanted. Every time our class would walk through the heavy, double wooden doors, all the boys’ eyes focused straight ahead. Approximately ten feet in front of the doors stood the shelf containing all the books about cars. Who was going to get them first? Who would get the one with the Porsche in it? Who would be left out? All the boys, keeping one eye on their competitors and one eye on the books, would strut past the towering shelf and grab the seat closest to it.

Of course I never got to sit at the close table, so I never got a chance to look at the shiny Lamborghinis or the blazing Ferraris. I was left to try to read about Mrs. Piggle Wiggle or Amelia Bedelia, who would run off a baseball field with home plate in her arms because she was told to "steal home."

One day, out of the blue, I snapped. As soon as we had stepped into the library, I ran to the close table and sat down. I stood out like a sore thumb among all the regulars sitting around me, but I was determined to get a car book. When the time came to get up and get our books, I shot over to the shelf and with a little elbow here and a little shove there, I managed to grab the best car book. Walking tall, head back slightly, I became King Arthur taking Excalibur back to the Round Table. All the boys followed as my knights and waited for me to open the Book.

It was not long before the librarian, Mrs. Sidnore, hunched-back and ugly, hobbled over to my table and stripped me of my crown, scarring me for life.

"Matthew, aren’t you too young to read that book?" she snarled.

"No, if Scotty and Mike can read it, I can read it," I stated.

"Well then, you should have no problem passing the five-finger test. You start to read a page and every time you don’t know a word, I will stick a finger out. Five fingers means you aren’t smart enough to read it," she proposed.

One finger. Two. Three. Four. Five.

"Put the book back" shot out of her mouth and struck me down. All eyes focused on my quivering ego. I was deformed, a mutant, too dumb for them.

For the rest of elementary school, I stuck to things I knew I could handle and tried to hide my reading

disability. I only read when it was absolutely necessary and not even all those times. It wasn’t until sixth grade that

I began to conquer the enemy that reading had

become to me.

My sixth grade English teacher, Ms. Myers, was the first of my inspirational heroes. One of the more memorable books we read in her class was My Side of the Mountain. The book represented a fantasy that I wanted to live. At that point in my life, I had started doing a lot of camping and hiking, and the thought of living on my own in the middle of the wilderness enthralled me. Ms. Myers always made reading fun by choosing the right stories for us. We read stories that we related to in one way or another.

Ms. Myers also had us keep journals of what we read. This inspired me to start my own personal journal. As I grew to know her, Ms. Myers convinced me that if I worked hard enough, I would learn to overcome my reading and writing disabilities and keep them from holding me back.

"You need to work twice as hard as all of your friends," she would tell me, "but soon, you will learn to work with your disabilities instead of your disabilities working against you."