A Writing Life (Part 12)

School reading is never like private reading. I liked the books that we read in class, mainly readers and a few specific novels and plays, but I knew that this material was part of a system meant to test us. This was unfair, but I would not have known this at the time. I simply kept what I read in private away from the school reading. Again, my imaginative life was divided between worlds. We had readers that were colour-coded, and I remember now that the colours would indicate how advanced you were in the program (your grade level did not count). That was the first time I felt separate in a classroom. Long before the advanced classes in math began, I was ahead of the curve, so to speak: I won spelling contests, wrote things that teachers thought should be shared with their classes (this did not help me with my popularity), and I made people laugh. This was also another key moment. I will never forget one fearsome-looking teacher reading one of my poems out loud to a fellow staff member and then laughing with delight and praise at what I was able to do on that piece on paper. Imagine how it feels for a child (a shy and lonely child) to see an adult who is not part of one’s family laughing with joy at something you created. It was as significant as the woman in that writing club, years later, handing me that notepad so that I could save my ideas.