When You Can Read

One rainy day, a six-year-old girl sat on a couch in the library after a long day at school. She thought grumpily that her life could not get much worse. Every day she woke up, and instead of being free to spend time with her friends, she was shipped off to a colorful building and forced to wrestle with her least favorite thing in the world: words. To top off this injustice, every afternoon following school she was dragged by her parents and brother to the library where she was made to sit while her brother finished his homework. She did not sympathize when her parents told her that the “quiet atmosphere was more conducive to [her brother’s] learning.” She didn’t even know what “conducive” meant. It sounded like a stomach condition. Words like that annoyed her, especially when her nine-year-old brother looked at her as though he was soooo superior and announced, “If she could read she might understand these things--- Then she might be as smart as him.” Her mood always improved drastically in those moments when her father laughed, gave him a smack upside the head, and told him to be nice. It was the smack she liked best.

Just then, her brother, Max, came jaunting across the open part of the library to her couch and plopped down beside her--- his motion violently animating the springs and sending his lighter sister into the air.

“I’ve found the answer!” He announced loudly to his bouncing sister, smiling as if he had done her a favor.

“Shhhhhhhhhh!” A nearby librarian gave him a death glare and started looking around for parents.

“Answer?”

“Yes Josie, the answer to all your problems.” He replied in a lowered voice. “I realize now why you can’t read.”

“I know why I can’t read. It’s hard and boring and I can never remember the sounds the letters make,” she informed him with her nose in the air.

“No, that can’t be it. Reading is easy,” he told her as she grumbled that only he would think so. “I think you just don’t like stories, so I’m going to show you how fun they are so you’ll like it.”

“I do too like stories!” She was quickly becoming annoyed now. The librarian had left, presumably to find her parents; Josie hoped they came soon.

“Sure, but the books they make you read at school are boring. ‘The dog ran. See the dog run.’ Who wants to read THAT? Wouldn’t you rather read about knights riding through the countryside on quests or about dwarves sneaking stealthily into dimly lit caverns to fight a dragon? I have that one, look here!” He directed her attention to a book she now saw in his hand. She looked:

%*(*^%#$%%^&**(() %^&&^&& %&%$## @#$*&* )():>:

She stared for a moment before eventually announcing: “I hate it.”

“This one isn’t boring! This is when Bilbo first sees Smog!”

“Don’t care, don’t like it. Wouldn’t like it even if I could read it.”

Just then, their conversation came to an abrupt end when the librarian who had failed to find their parents, came over upon hearing their escalating voices and towering directly in front of them, began to rain reprimands down on their heads. The day at the library ended quickly when their parents returned, and apologizing profusely, ushered them out of the building. Max was henceforth banned from associating with his sister during library visits.

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Six years later, on a seemingly long Friday, a frowning twelve-year-old girl sat on a couch in a library reading a school book. Coming to the end, she gasped in relief, slammed the book on the coffee table before her, and flung her arms out to stretch them. Seeing her dramatics, her brother came to her side (the ban long since having been ignored into non-existence) and asked her what she thought of the book she had just finished: The Giver.

“It was boring; awful! Simply horrendous, it took me forever!”

 “You didn’t think it had interesting ideas, or even that his ability to “see beyond” was neat?” Her brother looked incredulous.

“It was insanely boring. I could definitely have died if I’d spent a single minute more on it.”

“You wouldn’t have died, drama queen. Look at this, I showed it to you a while ago. Maybe you’ll like it better now that you’re older.” He sat down beside her and pushed a book into her lap.

“The Hobbit?” She asked skeptically, reading the cover. “Is this the one with the dragon that got us banned from seeing each other in the library all those years ago?”

“Not a chance, take a look.” He took it from her and flipping to a page, asked her to “Read that.”

She huffed. Taking the book, she announced dramatically: “The Glow of Smaug!” Then continuing in a sing-song voice: “There he lay, a vast red-gold dragon, fast asleep.”

Her brother laughed. “Read it seriously.”

“I read. That’s what you wanted. Now leave me alone so I can finish my homework and see my friends later.”

“Come now, that wasn’t reading. Give it a try. I almost don’t believe you truly know how. You wouldn’t hate reading if you knew how to do it properly.”

She glared, “I do too know how. Leave me alone to finish my work!”

“As your majesty wishes!” He stood, dipped into a flourished bow, and walked away.

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Sixteen years later, one rainy day, a young woman entered a library. She walked through an open space to where several couches were arranged around a rug and a coffee table. She stood for a moment, considering the silence and peace of the place, before she sunk into a well-worn spot looking around at the shelves and remaining scenery. Windows were proliferate and she could see the down-pour outside that she had escaped from. Potted plants sat at intervals around the room. A person sneezed, and someone in the history section hummed the theme to “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” She pondered the many times her brother had browsed these shelves. He had loved books with a passion she had never understood. His desire for her to understand had bothered her; he was always trying to hand her a new book he thought she would like. He wanted her to understand, but she refused to. They’d been caught in that dead lock for more years than she could count.

She suddenly had a thought and immediately stifled it. She wasn’t going give in now, after all these years. However, she slowly began to think: if she tried it now no one would ever need to know. She certainly wasn’t going to tell anyone.

She stood and walked slowly around the table toward the shelves. It was certainly true that she had never liked reading, but she had also never done it willingly. The words just bored her. They were not magic like they were for Max. Josie entered the fantasy isle and her eyes fell upon her brother’s favorite book. She had never liked it before, but she slid if from the shelf and returned to the couch. She almost chuckled at the way the old book opened easily to Max’s favorite part.

The world fell away. A sound began to throb in her ears like the bubbling of a huge pot. Darkness spread around her like a blanket. She stood and went forward for a ways until before her stretched a huge cavern. It reached into the blackened heights above her and though she could see little: “rising from the near side of the rocky floor there is a great glow. The glow of Smaug! There he lay, a vast red-gold dragon, fast asleep; a thrumming came from his jaws and nostrils, and wisps of smoke, but his fires were low in slumber.…”

“The library is closing in two minutes,” a gravelly voice emitted from the speakers. “Two minutes to closing.”

Josie started, looking up. She glanced back at the book and realized she had read over nine chapters. Starting near the end of the book had not hindered her. She knew the story--- Max had certainly recounted it enough times for her to understand it.

However, it wasn’t really understanding that she had felt. She had never experienced this before. The world dropped away as though it had never been there. The coughing, sneezing, and humming library residents had disappeared completely. She had stood in the cavern beside Bilbo, in-front of him, behind him, or perhaps as him as he faced the dragon. She had felt fear, real fear at the sight of Smaug. She had felt the waves of Smaug’s breath roll through the ground, though she sat on a cushioned seat in the library. For more than half an hour, there had been no library. Only the caves, fields, and Lake Town had existed.

Suddenly she could understand her brother in an entirely new way. She knew now what he had tried to show her and why he had lobbied so long for this. He wanted her to feel this loss of self. Never had she felt so alive as just now when she had lost all sense of herself and her pride and her cares and worries and her wet, cloudy, dripping reality. She had lost herself in the book, in the story. She knew now with certainty that she had never truly read before. Absorbing and memorizing a text was not reading and she could no longer think of it as such, not now that the words had come alive. She had loved it. She knew she could not leave this alone. She had to continue to experience it again and again as often as possible. She stood, book in hand, and walked to the check-out. Unfortunately, as eager as she was to read the entire book, she did not look forward to the smug look on her brother’s face when he discovered she had learned what he had tried for years to teach her. As she left the library, she could already hear his “I told you so” ringing in her ears.”

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At Christmas that year, her brother discovered her secret and suddenly acquired an aura of glee that did not leave him for the rest of the holiday. He smirked at her often. Only, for once, his smirk was less a smirk than it was simply a smile. He smiled and she could see in his eyes that his mirth was simply true joy that she had discovered the wonder and beauty that he had for so long tried to share with her. Josie stared for a moment at his radiant face and then she smiled back.