Bookcases and Braces
When I was 11 years old I had to wear braces. Like most kids I hated them, but what I hated more was visiting the orthodontist. In the run up to having the brace fitted I had to have four teeth removed, on two different occasions. Back then they put you under with an injection. They’d sit me down in the chair, ask me much I weighed, and then inject me in the hand. I remember that cold feeling as the anaesthetic rushed through my veins, and the intoxicating smell of various dental compounds like Formo-creasol, Metacresylacetate, Eugenol, Acrylic Monomer and just the odour of the drill excavating enamel. Black out. Waking with blood in my mouth, the pain, and the disorientation. Ice-cream. Soup. Usually in that order. Then there was the fitting and the tightening of metal plates, and wire. The aching gums and the mortification that came with smiling, or talking. It was a horrible experience and I hated every minute of it.
However, if I went through that process now, I’m sure the trauma would not appear so bad. I would be awake for the teeth extraction, and the smell of the dental surgery is one I have come to accept as a normal part of my year. The aching gums and indignity of wearing a brace would have lost the gravity it had in my youth because peer pressure and vanity is not paramount to me now. In truth, I have considered having another brace fitted, to finish the job that was started some 29 years ago, but like I said, vanity isn’t high on my agenda at the moment.
I mention this because the act of having a brace instilled a real hate for the dentist for many years. After leaving school I didn’t attend one again for 16 years, and when I did, I needed valium to get me through the experience. Luckily, my dentist was patient with me, talked me through the procedures and explained all the noises I would expect to hear during the treatment. Now, I’m fine. Still can’t say I look forward to visiting the dentist, but I’m not bothered when the little blue card pops through the door. (mental note – find out when you’re next appointment is)
About the time I had the brace fitted, I had joined high school and was thrust into a world where academia became juxtaposed with Chinese burns, dead-arms and being a human spittoon for most of the older kids. Worse than all this was English lit. I hated English. More than writing, I hated reading. My teacher would give us these foxed, dog-eared books and we would all take turn in class reading a paragraph or page. You could literary hear the sweat rolling down our legs. There is a scientific condition that occurs when a person is placed into a moment of panic and the brain shuts off cognitive function making you momentarily blind. It happens a lot to men who are given the task of retrieving a utensil, or any other arbitrary object, from a kitchen drawer, a demand placed upon them by their partner. For some reason, though the object is in plain view, a man will be unable to see it. Same in shopping aisles when instructed to fetch a box of Sugar Puffs or instant mash. This is why, when it came to my turn to read a paragraph, my brain would shutdown and draw a veil of darkness over my eyes. This feeling was one that resonated through my school days. Even if I read to myself at home, I found the words grew small and meaningless. The content of the books were as dull as the pages that had been faded by age and fingering.
Like the dentist, I grew to hate English. I didn’t smile when I entered the class, much the same way the dentist had forced me to never smile while wearing the braces. The Penguin classics, they were as uncomfortable in my mouth as the many wires that traversed by teeth. English taught me to hate English and everything associated with it. I figured so long as I could string a few coherent sentences together, I could get through life and abdicate literature in its many varied form to people in corduroy and leather elbow patches.
The day I bucked up enough courage to visit the dentist was the same year I picked up a book. Both were monumental moments in my life; the first because I was unfettering myself from an adolescent fear that would, eventually if not conquered, see to it I would be toothless and in dentures by my mid-forties. The second was monumental because I willingly chose to read that book out of pleasure and entertainment, not, as before, for educational gain. That book was To Kill a Mockingbird and remains, to this day, one of my favourites. After that, I read another and another. Soon, I was getting through a book a month, then one every couple of weeks. When my wife and I used to spend our Christmas in a lodge in York, I would get through three or four books in a week. I began to enjoy reading.
It’s timing. I posted a link on Twitter today from the Independent newspaper detailing how reading is important, but how some novelists found books to be off-putting when they were forced upon them as children/young adults. It put me off, and had I not picked up To Kill a Mockingbird 29 years later, I would have never have decided to become a writer. To this day I find myself becoming very frustrated with classics (though Amanda Gowin hates that term). The prose does not appeal to me. Just as LOTR does not float my boat, I appreciate that many people do love that kind of fiction. Likewise, many people these days sing the praises of Cormac McCarthy and Bret Easton Ellis, two authors who’s reputation renders me baffled to say the very least. But hey, there are 7 billion people in the world, and to think that each will enjoy the same book is foolish (especially when a large portion of those cannot read due to them being too young or with learning difficulties). Yet, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I did enjoy English at school. Had I gone to a different school, had a teacher that instilled the joy of literature in me, or had peers that were supportive and as passionate about words at the writers they were reading, would I have been the writer I am today? Would I have been better? Would I even be a writer?
Part of writing for me is overcoming the fear of literature, just as I wanted to overcome my fear of the dentist. I needed to face my fear head on and see if it was as scary as my mind had built it up to be.
My daughter is three years old and loves books. She can’t read but as memorised many and so sits on the couch and reads them aloud to both myself and my wife. To witness this bloats my heart. She is what I wanted to be, a person consumed by the magic of literature, of stories and words, who loves to hear them spoken aloud by herself or others. When she reads I want to cry, and I hope with all my heart she continues to love books and does grow scared or indifferent toward them. While I’m sure our tastes will differ in the years to come, I know the power a book can have, and how it can take you from depression to happiness in a single sentence.
However, if I went through that process now, I’m sure the trauma would not appear so bad. I would be awake for the teeth extraction, and the smell of the dental surgery is one I have come to accept as a normal part of my year. The aching gums and indignity of wearing a brace would have lost the gravity it had in my youth because peer pressure and vanity is not paramount to me now. In truth, I have considered having another brace fitted, to finish the job that was started some 29 years ago, but like I said, vanity isn’t high on my agenda at the moment.
I mention this because the act of having a brace instilled a real hate for the dentist for many years. After leaving school I didn’t attend one again for 16 years, and when I did, I needed valium to get me through the experience. Luckily, my dentist was patient with me, talked me through the procedures and explained all the noises I would expect to hear during the treatment. Now, I’m fine. Still can’t say I look forward to visiting the dentist, but I’m not bothered when the little blue card pops through the door. (mental note – find out when you’re next appointment is)
About the time I had the brace fitted, I had joined high school and was thrust into a world where academia became juxtaposed with Chinese burns, dead-arms and being a human spittoon for most of the older kids. Worse than all this was English lit. I hated English. More than writing, I hated reading. My teacher would give us these foxed, dog-eared books and we would all take turn in class reading a paragraph or page. You could literary hear the sweat rolling down our legs. There is a scientific condition that occurs when a person is placed into a moment of panic and the brain shuts off cognitive function making you momentarily blind. It happens a lot to men who are given the task of retrieving a utensil, or any other arbitrary object, from a kitchen drawer, a demand placed upon them by their partner. For some reason, though the object is in plain view, a man will be unable to see it. Same in shopping aisles when instructed to fetch a box of Sugar Puffs or instant mash. This is why, when it came to my turn to read a paragraph, my brain would shutdown and draw a veil of darkness over my eyes. This feeling was one that resonated through my school days. Even if I read to myself at home, I found the words grew small and meaningless. The content of the books were as dull as the pages that had been faded by age and fingering.
Like the dentist, I grew to hate English. I didn’t smile when I entered the class, much the same way the dentist had forced me to never smile while wearing the braces. The Penguin classics, they were as uncomfortable in my mouth as the many wires that traversed by teeth. English taught me to hate English and everything associated with it. I figured so long as I could string a few coherent sentences together, I could get through life and abdicate literature in its many varied form to people in corduroy and leather elbow patches.
The day I bucked up enough courage to visit the dentist was the same year I picked up a book. Both were monumental moments in my life; the first because I was unfettering myself from an adolescent fear that would, eventually if not conquered, see to it I would be toothless and in dentures by my mid-forties. The second was monumental because I willingly chose to read that book out of pleasure and entertainment, not, as before, for educational gain. That book was To Kill a Mockingbird and remains, to this day, one of my favourites. After that, I read another and another. Soon, I was getting through a book a month, then one every couple of weeks. When my wife and I used to spend our Christmas in a lodge in York, I would get through three or four books in a week. I began to enjoy reading.
It’s timing. I posted a link on Twitter today from the Independent newspaper detailing how reading is important, but how some novelists found books to be off-putting when they were forced upon them as children/young adults. It put me off, and had I not picked up To Kill a Mockingbird 29 years later, I would have never have decided to become a writer. To this day I find myself becoming very frustrated with classics (though Amanda Gowin hates that term). The prose does not appeal to me. Just as LOTR does not float my boat, I appreciate that many people do love that kind of fiction. Likewise, many people these days sing the praises of Cormac McCarthy and Bret Easton Ellis, two authors who’s reputation renders me baffled to say the very least. But hey, there are 7 billion people in the world, and to think that each will enjoy the same book is foolish (especially when a large portion of those cannot read due to them being too young or with learning difficulties). Yet, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I did enjoy English at school. Had I gone to a different school, had a teacher that instilled the joy of literature in me, or had peers that were supportive and as passionate about words at the writers they were reading, would I have been the writer I am today? Would I have been better? Would I even be a writer?
Part of writing for me is overcoming the fear of literature, just as I wanted to overcome my fear of the dentist. I needed to face my fear head on and see if it was as scary as my mind had built it up to be.
My daughter is three years old and loves books. She can’t read but as memorised many and so sits on the couch and reads them aloud to both myself and my wife. To witness this bloats my heart. She is what I wanted to be, a person consumed by the magic of literature, of stories and words, who loves to hear them spoken aloud by herself or others. When she reads I want to cry, and I hope with all my heart she continues to love books and does grow scared or indifferent toward them. While I’m sure our tastes will differ in the years to come, I know the power a book can have, and how it can take you from depression to happiness in a single sentence.
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