This Thanksgiving break I had the pleasure of visiting my family in Northern California. We ate turkey (too much), caught up on each others' lives, and, most importantly, got out the Christmas decorations. All of these events where fun and memorable, but, now that I have returned to Southern California, the experience that I find myself returning to most during the break was a run in with one of my old high school teachers; the teacher who inspired me to become an English major.
Here is a bit of back story before we begin: Up until junior year in high school I hated writing. It was tiresome, burdening, and restrictive. Now let me explain. Before junior year the majority of English classes which I took where pre-examined, predefined courses, and the essays which were required in the courses revolved around proving a theme that the teacher had already picked out for you. I was not prompted to think critically, I was not asked for my own opinion, I was just asked to think as my teacher did and demonstrate why my teacher's said theme was prominent in the story. Well, needless to say, I did horribly. Why? Because I was bored.
Junior year, however, was new. I decided to take honors English that year and, even though I begged my mom to let me drop the course, it turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life. This teacher didn't like to hear himself reiterated in the essays which he assigned. In fact, he hated it so much that he would mark us off for doing it. I can remember thinking after receiving the first blog prompt that the printer must have failed. The prompt was much too short. It merely stated something along the lines of: pick a theme you feel prominent in Samuel Beckett's “Waiting for Godot” and reveal how this theme functions throughout the story. I was inspired. My boredom was over and I felt a sense of freedom which I never before had felt in school. That quarter I fell in love with writing, I fell in love with reading, and I fell in love with literature. That love has only continued to bloom as I have furthered my education into college.
But that is the past. Moving forward, I had a run in with this teacher, and this run in was something that I had wished would happen for some time now. I had imagined that the greatness I had seen in him was due to the lack of knowledge that I possessed, and, like most aspects of life revisited after growing up, I expected to be let down. I was not however. The education that I have received thus far in college only spurred our conversations further. As we navigated from Wordsworth to Whitman, from Ovid to Arthur I now found myself keeping up. Picking up on things that he would say that I would not have during my high school years. It was a great experience and made me realize that certain aspects of life, such as a conversation with a past instructor, are only made better with the more knowledge that we possess. Though I was able to have much more involved literary conversations with this teacher, I was still impressed with the amount of knowledge that he possessed and I continued to learn from him throughout our interaction.
It seemed that fortuity was on my side that day. As I came home my mom was digging through an old box of books so I sat down next to her and helped her look through them. During our dig I came across my childhood favorite book: The Ear, The Eye, and The Arm by Nancy Farmer. Seeing that I had just had the recent run in with my high school teacher I took my finding of the book as more than coincidence and decided that I would sit down and read the book to see if I would still find it great, though I had not read it in over ten years. And let me tell you, it was. My love for this book could have possibly been driven by the nostalgic euphoria that fell over me as I soared through the pages, but I would like to believe that it was more than that. The entire experience was unique and new because, though I found myself enjoying much of the same parts of the book that I had when I was a child, I also found myself intrigued by so many new sections that I had not fully understood as a kid. I picked up on allusions that I was not aware of and found meaning that was not apparent during my readings ten years before. During this reading, the book morphed into something new, while still preserving the roots that the 11 year old version of myself had grown so close to.
So what am I saying? I am telling you to try it. Think back. What was your favorite book as a child and when was the last time you read it? Go and find this book and reread it and decide for yourself if it is still worth the praise it received from you as a child. So take a step back and give it a try. You never know what you might find.
-Nick
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