On Books, and How I learned to Hate Myself
Sometimes, we fail our kids by helping them succeed.
In elementary school, I was in a special program for gifted kids — a group of adorable little nerds who were much more inclined to read the encyclopedia than play street football after class. We met every other week with an advisor to work on fun projects that would challenge us outside of the normal, boring curriculum (a word I knew how to spell at age eight, hence my presence in this little cabal). The final project of school year was my favorite. Each student was to write and illustrate their own original story, and then bind it all together in a handmade book. The project was to happen in three phases: Story first, then illustrations, and we’d design the cover and bind it all with twine.
I thought I had just been given the powers of a god. MAKE my own BOOK?! Typically I would wait until a few days before the next group meeting to start working on an assignment, but this time I wanted to get to work right away. For the next two evenings, I toiled over my literary debut — the story of a town mischief maker that would put slime in everyone’s shoes as they slept. My pencil raced, spilling out the first and last draft of my novella upon the special blue-green stationery I picked out for the finished project. I knew this one wouldn’t need a rewrite.
