I HATE READING!

“You don’t get it,” he says with angry eyes. “I HATE reading!”

          Not a good thing, because this is Language Arts where we read and write, and not just a little but a lot. And this student is telling me he can’t stand it.

As his teacher, I guess I’ve got a couple of choices:

1.   I can write him off, say, “Okay, dude, just don’t cause trouble, do a little work, and maybe I can get you a ‘D’ and you’ll pass the year.”

2.   I can try to convince him that reading (and writing) don’t have to feel like having your front teeth pulled by a madman with rusty pliers.

I choose number 2.

Why?

Because the kid’s not stupid.  He may not think he’s not smart, but he is. In fact, the kid reminds me of . . . me . . . in the 8^th grade.

Back then, I didn’t like reading either. I didn’t even like school! 

Back then, I was just trying to get from one grade to the next without flunking.

I made a lot of C’s. Doing just enough to get by. My parents would go nuts, screaming and shouting about how smart I was, and how there was no excuse for the grades I was making.  My teachers would pile on, too.

They were like an army of smelly old people always in my face!

So I got really angry . . . and even angrier—at my parents, my teachers, my books, the whole school. Sometimes, when no one was looking, I would even punch the water fountains!

Still, somehow, I made it into college—just barely. At the end of my freshman year in college, I brought home big bag of Cs and one D. My overall average was 72.3. Hey, big deal, I thought. At least I passed!

My parents didn’t see it that way. 

So my dad got me a job at the steel factory where he worked--one of those loud, stinking, dirty places where they pour flaming, hot melted metal from huge buckets. And the gooey metal is so on-fire, so bright, it’s like the sun, and you have to wear those tinted goggles—like ugly sunglasses—to keep you from going blind.  They also make you wear a dumb-looking hard-hat helmet so flying metal won't split your head open. And they expect you, an 18-year-old boy, to use ten-foot poles to guide those buckets of hell from one place to the next.

On some days, when it was 98-degrees outside, it was about 130 inside

the factory. Rivers of sweat oozed out of me, I watched the hairs on my arm singed off by the raging heat. The place was what I imagined hell to be like.

And I thought I would die there.  Especially after I saw another guy

almost die there.

Mutt was about 45 years old—to me, really old.  But he was okay because, unlike all the other jerks in the factory who treated me like crap [“Hey, punk! Go get me a Coke!” they’d shout], Mutt was always nice.

One day, above all the roaring noise of the factory, I heard above me a weird screaming/crunching noise like a car crash, then a loud, ear-splitting crack. I looked up and saw it coming—a pole the size of a big street-light pole. It was supposed to be fixed onto the large crane. But the chain that held it had snapped, and the pole was falling, coming fast from behind Mutt who couldn’t see it. But I saw it almost like it was in slow motion. I opened my mouth to scream, but before I could, the monstrous gray pole slammed across Mutt’s shoulder and slammed him violently to the ground. Several of us scrambled to roll the thing off him. Then I saw he was bleeding from his mouth and nose, as if something had been smashed bloody inside him. His eyes were wide and frightened. He was trying to talk, but he just gurgled. Somebody turned him face down so he wouldn’t drown on his own blood.

The ambulance came quickly and took him away. And about ten of us workers were left to just stand there, looking at where Mutt had been lying--his blood still pooling and flowing slowly across the dirt floor.

I started to cry, though I was trying not to. I had taken off my goggles. Quickly I put them back on, hoping to hide my tears. Then I felt an arm come around my shoulder. It was Marvin, a tall dude with a very angry face, who, until that moment, had treated me meaner than anyone in the factory.

“It’s okay,” he said. “We’re all crying.” I took of my goggles, looked up, and saw him wipe tears from his face.  He and I and the others stood there silently for a few more moments. Then, suddenly, Marvin spun me around to face him. He leaned over me, pointed to the blood on the floor, and said this.

“All of that is why you should stay in school.  Use your damn head, boy! Do all that readin’ and writin’ they tell ya. Do it and you won’t have to work in a hell-hole like this. I ain’t lyin’ to you, boy! Keep your butt in school. It’ll take you places we can’t go,” he said pointing to other guys there.

Then he pushed me forward, like he was pushing me into the future.

Four weeks later I went back to college. From then on, I kept an “A” average because—finally—I started taking reading and writing seriously.

Marvin was right, by the way.  Becoming a good student enabled me to do all kinds of things that don’t come easily to those who don’t read or write much.

So . . . that true story flashes through my head when I hear a student tell me that he (or she) hates reading.

I don’t get mad at that student.  Because I was once like him.  I know how it feels to hate reading.

But I want you to trust me. It’s not as bad as you think. In fact, when you find a book or an article that’s about something you really like, reading can be fun. And writing about stuff that interests you can be fun, too. [I had fun writing this!]

          Finally, reading can keep you out of trouble and danger and give you some great opportunities.  Please trust me. I know.