A Girl Who Learns How to Read Out Loud

I woke up this morning and being that I don't have to work tomorrow (Labor Day) I allowed myself to roll out of bed, onto the couch and checked out what was on TV. As I scanned the channels I ran across the title of a book I read last year (a movie now airing on HBO) called "In Her Shoes". It is a very sweet book/movie about two sisters who have gone down different paths in life and their reconnection with their estranged grandmother (played by Shirley McClain). About half way through the movie there is a scene where the troubled sister (played by Cameron Diaz) is working at an assisted living and a blind resident asks her to read to him. She believes she is not a good reader and avoids reading but as she will discover... she could do it all along. As I watched this scene play out I found myself crying uncontrollably, it touched something inside me I put on a dark, dusty shelf deep in my subconscious a long, long time ago.

Through my journey of self awareness I now pause and allow myself to feel the ugly, horrible feelings and attempt to understand them and put them to rest for good. In the past I either didn't deal with them or I self medicated myself to not feel at all and I am thankfully still alive to tell you that neither of those options work.

My entire life has been plagued with low self esteem and self doubt, the root of this has yet to be determined but this scene in the movie transported me back...

1983, 3rd grade, Holy Rosary Catholic School, Nashville, TN. Unbeknown to me the class was "tested" on our reading skills and then divided into two groups. The first group received a beautiful new reading text book and was known to be the "good" readers in the class. The second group, my group, got an ugly old text book and it was knowledge to the class that this group was the slow or challenged readers in the class. Everyday the two groups split up to read out of their respective books. I knew I should be in the other good readers group and I was so hurt and confused as to why I was in the slow reading group. I just didn't understand it. Day after day as I sat there in the slow, challenged reading group I remember an actual, tangible click down in my self esteem. I knew I wasn't very good at math but reading? Reading I knew I was good at that. Right?

In the middle of my third grade year my family moved to Charlotte, NC and at first it appeared I would be able to start over and just be a regular student in the class but my self doubt had already begun to manifest itself into the monster I fight today. The worst thing is this. In my remaining years of school I was placed in classes beneath my skill level until the eleventh grade when my literature teacher (Mr. Walker) recognized this. Finally, in my senior year of high school I got to read the beautiful classic books with the advanced students. Unfortunately it was too little too late.

Now I know, when I was given the oral reading test in third grade my low self esteem got in the way of performing well. In the young mind of an eight year old it made a very impressionable stamp and it makes me so angry to know this was a defining moment in my life and was part of the catalyst for not going to college, not using my talents and achieving the life I envisioned. I could have been so much more! I need to be able to put this to rest forever, not just on a dark dusty shelf stored away in my brain for later consumption. I cannot allow this to destroy me anymore. I am what I am. I have to love me and my life the way I turned out, the way it is.

As for the movie I highly recommend it. For me it spoke of my relationship with my brother growing up. It is a touching story about family trials and tribulations with an underlying story of, a girl who learns how to read out loud.