The Story of Me

Reading Me

Before Kindergarten, I was scared and worried. My aunt didn’t help with this, at all. I was reading to her. I read her a whole book. It was probably a picture book, but as I hadn’t even started Kindergarten my aunt was impressed.

“What are you going to do in Kindergarten?” she asked when I had finished. I got even more worried when she said that. I was nervous and scared already. Although, in hindsight, I had nothing to be worried about. This is something I only know about because of what my mom has told me. I also don’t properly remember anything before that. This goes to show how I have been reading as long as I can remember. This makes it possible to map my life through reading. I’m going to take you along as I map out the journey of my life through the lens of reading.

One of my favorite early memories of reading comes from Reading Enrichment in Kindergarten. One day my class was lined up by the door to go outside and do an experiment. Then my Enrichment teacher came in. She was coming to retreve the students in our Enrichment class to read a non-fiction book on dinosaurs. Ms. Sansom, my Kindergarten teacher, had our group take a vote. I was the only one who would’ve rather stayed inside to read than go outside for the experiment. However, since I was the only one who wanted to go to Enrichment, we went outside. This is an example of my love of, and dedication to, reading. I love thinking about this. It makes me laugh whenever I think about it.

If you skip ahead a few years, to the summer before I started third grade to be exact, and you have the wondrous memory of me meeting Harry Potter, the boy who lived, for the first time. It was a beautiful late summer afternoon. There was a light breeze and it was moderately warm. The weather was perfect for my family. For this reason we were seated outside at our table in the gazebo. The gazebo and table were in the shape of octagons. They both had black metal framework. The table had a glass top and the gazebo had a tan cloth top. There are six black metal chairs around the table, one on each side. I was sitting by the opening near our back door. My mother was sitting across from me. My dad was sitting next to me with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in his hands. I asked him what he was reading. He told me a little about it. He then proceeded to read part of the beginning to me.

“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number 4, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much” He continued on through most of the first chapter. I eventually climbed into his lap whilst he read. I started to get antsy after a while. I asked him to stop. It was magical from the first word. One thing that made it less magical than it could have been was that he was reading to me. I like reading for myself, it lets me escape into another world, another life, another me. That’s what makes every book magical. I remember this so well. It was the start of something beautiful, wonderful, and amazing. This is the first time you can truly get a glimpse of me properly.

Later on I read Harry Potter by myself. At this point I would like to bring up a beautiful post I once saw on the internet. The post was a picture of Jo Rowling (J.K. Rowling) that said “Reblog if this women has changed your life”. Someone who reblogged it added that when she thought about it, Jo didn’t change her life. She had read it at a young age, and Jo had shaped her life. This is the same as what happened to me. I don’t know what my life would be if I hadn’t read Harry Potter when I did. My mom whizzed through it in 2 weeks flat. I have a very vivid memory of my father and her discussing the “eighth book” that my dad thought existed. This is one of my funniest memories.

Much of my third grade year can be told by which Harry Potter book I was reading and the things I did that were related to it. One of these related things was my first book report that I did was on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I made a diorama of one scene when Hermione is making the Polyjuice Potion in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. I was required to write a summary that was at least 10 sentences long. My summary was much longer. I did a sentence per chapter.