A Nearly Illiterate Child to a Successful Author
There are a lot of reasons I shouldn’t be a writer today, some of which came from my own mis-understanding of grammar when I was a child, some from laziness, and others…well…keep reading.
I couldn’t read very well in elementary school and I couldn’t write properly either. I was told by my teachers that I didn’t have a knack for literature and I would be held back if I didn’t improve my skills, which was a very idle threat, simply because I didn’t have an ounce of improvement after I was told these things, and yet each year I was bounced up a grade level.
Bad grades always followed.
In middle school I had failing grades in every writing class that I ever took, and I flunked every writing and reading test. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing and I didn’t feel that I ever would–or even needed to.
In high school I passed because I was a star athlete. I had coaches as my teachers, and when a coach wasn’t my teacher, a coach would direct a teacher to give me a “good enough grade”. I remember I had a 45% grade in Chemistry my junior year and I was shocked to see a D on my report card, thus allowing me to continue playing short-stop on my varsity baseball team.
Nonetheless, that was Chemistry and not writing.
You see, I never learned the basics of grammar or even how to spell. I didn’t know what verbs, adverbs, adjectives, or pronouns were. When a teacher would speak of an adverb, it might as well have been in a foreign language, because I had no idea what to do with an adverb, what it was for and where to put it.
Yet, in school and out of school, I wanted to be an author–a story teller that was talented enough to be published. A dream that I felt would always be just that–a dream.
But, there were the few and very rare occasions when, looking back, you could see that writing was perhaps in my future.
In sixth grade we were asked to create our own children’s book.
I wrote, “Penguins on Pluto”, a story of three penguins named Pat, Penny, and Pooney, who create a space ship out of snow, blast off, and then head into space. Confused and scared, Penny takes over the controls and calms everyone down. When he notices a button that says, “SUPERHYPOTURBOGALACTICDRIVE”, he presses it and they go faster and faster through the solar system. After several pages of drama, they hit a meteor and find themselves crashing on Pluto, where they meet a nice group of Pluto-Beings. After some great and enlightening discussions with the Pluto-beings, and a minor altercations with a couple of mean Pluto-Beings, they get help repairing their ship. They then head back to planet Earth and crash land in Penny’s backyard.
Apparently, I liked to crash things.
Nonetheless, that story was the class favorite, the school’s favorite, and ended up being published into a book. I was even bused around to elementary school classrooms to read to the younger kids.
Yet, I really didn’t know how to write. I could put a story together, make it interesting and fun, but I didn’t even know where to put a comma, a quote, a semicolon, or a colon.
I was writing blind.
In 7th grade I had enough of this “not knowing” business and I decided to change things for the better. I knew that I just had to ask someone what to do and how to do it, but how? My parents weren’t skilled in grammar, vocabulary, spelling, or writing, so I couldn’t ask them. I was too shy to ask teachers, so that wasn’t a viable option I was willing to consider. So, I decided I was going to do it on my own. But, I’d have to start slowly, so I chose to start learning vocabulary and spelling first.
I asked my father to take me to a bookstore and buy me a dictionary. He was, and still is, a very giving man, and so of course he said yes.
When we arrived at the bookstore, we walked to a shelf with dictionaries displayed in all colors and sizes. I chose one and told my dad that I was determined to learn from it, one way or another (I was in 7th grade, so I didn’t say it in those exact words). From that moment forward, I convinced myself that any word I didn’t know or understand, whether it be in a book or from a teacher’s mouth, I would make sure to look it up, write it down, and memorize the definition.
Simple, right? You’d think so…
The next day I put my assigned reading book in my backpack, along with my dictionary, then headed out to school.
My first class so happened to be Reading with Mrs. Buchanon–the prettiest teacher in all of the land. I had a crush on her, just like all the boys did. She had brown hair, long eye lashes, blue eyes, bright red lip stick, and the face of an angel. Her husband was the coach of the high school basketball team, which meant to all of us boys that she was even cooler than we could ever imagine, and I knew that if she saw my dictionary, then I’d truly impress her.
That morning in class our assignment was to read a chapter, then write a summary on it. I pulled my book out, placed it on my desk, and started reading. The first page had a word I didn’t understand, so I lugged the dictionary out from my back pack and dropped it on the desk. I fished through the pages until I came upon the word I was looking for. I read the definition, felt satisfied, wrote it down and continued reading.
Suddenly, I felt a tap on my shoulder.
I looked up to see a brightly glowing Mrs. Buchanon.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
With a smile, I proudly lifted my chin. “I brought my dictionary. Any word I don’t know, I’m going to look it up.” I flashed an even wider smile, thinking she’d like me even more and perhaps applaud me in front of the entire class. I imagined my classmates picking me up, parading me down the hallways, and all the while music playing in the background with confetti sprinkling down on me. Everyone would know that I was the most brilliant child in school.
That, of course, didn’t occur.
My smile quickly melted when I saw her shake her head, her lips forming a frown. “No, no, no. You’re too young to use a dictionary. When you don’t know a word, you must skip over it and continue reading. You’ll soon figure out what the word meant by the sentences that follow. Do you understand?”
Huh? Really? That didn’t make any sense. She looked at the entire room and used me as an example of what NOT to do.
I nodded my head yes, faking an understanding that I simply couldn’t wrap my head around. I then sunk down into my seat, defeated. I didn’t understand why I was too young to use a dictionary. After a while of complete and utter confusion, I raised my hand and Mrs. Buchanon walked back over to me.
“Can I please use my dictionary? My dad bought it for me yesterday.” I thought that if I included my father in my dilemma, then I’d get off the hook and be able to use my dictionary.
“Not in my class. Like I said, you just skip over the words you don’t know. That’s how you become a better reader.”
Baffled, I put the dictionary away and continued reading, feeling deflated because all I wanted to do was learn how to write, which included proper spelling and advanced vocabulary skills. I took her advice though and never used a dictionary in her class, or any classes, until…
…high school, junior year.
For some God-awful reason and a big mistake by the school placement program, I was put into Advanced English with the hardest teacher in school. His name was Mr. Graham. He was a trained actor, bald with a terrible golden-blond hair-piece, and large buck teeth. He was well-known for picking on people if they seemed “dull” or “dim-witted”. If you were one second late to class, the entire class would know, because he locked the door the minute the class was scheduled to start.
So, upon the first day in his class, I told myself to keep my mouth shut and never ask a question or volunteer an answer. I’d be crazy to do such a thing. Only the smart kids raised their hands and I wasn’t one of them.
I soon found out how much of a mistake THAT was. Those who raised their hands were sometimes picked to answer questions, but those who didn’t raise their hands were also picked to answer questions. So, raising or not raising my hand didn’t help me out one bit!
And, soon enough, a week into his class I found how blush-red my face could get when I was put on the spot.
“Mr. Ellis?” he asked. ”Tell us what it means, please.” He was referring to a passage in the “Scarlett Letter” by Nathanial Hawthorne.
I froze, suddenly perspiring through every pore of my body. My ears burned, my eyes wanted to tear up, and my cheeks went rosy. I didn’t know what to say, because even though I had read the passage he asked about, I didn’t have a clue as to what it meant. In fact, I didn’t know what a quarter of the words on any given page in that book meant.
I stared wide eyed at Mr. Graham, hoping somehow the correct words would pop into my head and blather out of my mouth. Instead, I looked down at the book, struggling to at least say something.
Say something! I thought.
Every eye in the room was on me.
Just say anything. Please?
My mouth wouldn’t open.
Can I please speak? Brandon, just say some words. Make up something. Talk about how beautiful the book is and how it stirs long held emotions in you that you didn’t even know you had.
Hello?
Brandon?
Are you there?
All of these thoughts and nothing. I was now as purple-red as a beet.
After a minute, he finally shook his head and narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t read it?”
I lied and said that I didn’t. Not because I wanted to lie, but because that’s what came out of my mouth. I could feel the rest of the class glaring at me, making me want to run out of the room or hide under my desk.
“Pick up the book and come up to the front of the room, Mr. Ellis.”
He always used our last names, because everything he did was formal. He sat perfectly straight, stood up slowly like he was royalty, and wrote with the most beautiful cursive that I had ever seen.
I stood, walked to the chalk board and turned around, seeing the students looking at me with concern written on their faces. They knew what I was experiencing and they were glad it wasn’t them. Plus, I could tell they knew I didn’t know much about anything, let alone anything about the “Scarlet Letter”. At that moment, I understood that my quiet demeanor in the classroom never truly hid the fact that I was the worst at all aspects of writing and reading.
“Read page 17, Mr. Ellis.”
I opened the book and read, falling over words, stumbling with the incorrect pronunciations of those same words, and making an utter fool of myself. My heart was practically beating out of my chest. Then, I heard a giggle and looked up. It was Brian Moffenbeier. He was a good friend, but smarter than I was by far and had a hard time keeping a straight face with anything, which often led to his eventual laughter. It turns out that not only my face had color, but my neck was cherry red, causing his abrupt cackle.
“What did that passage mean to you, Mr. Ellis?” asked Mr. Graham.
“Um…I think…” I looked back at the page again, silently reading it to myself. I didn’t know what the sentences were even trying to say.
“Yes, Mr. Ellis? Cat catch your tongue?”
I shook my head, my face growing hotter with every passing second.
“Please sit down.” He paused, waiting for me to find my seat. He then addressed the class. “If any of you don’t read the assigned work, then you’ll suffer consequences similar to what Mr. Ellis just had to endure. Comprende?”
No one spoke, but the silence was “yes” enough for him. I sat down, not wanting to ever look up again.
Mr. Graham was mean.
Yes, it was true, but his cruelty was a disguise. He wanted us to learn, to soar to new heights in writing, reading, and to understand the minds of the old writing masters. He challenged us more so than any teacher in school, and, as I found through the months of being in his class, his mercenary disguise soon wore off. We could see right through him and soon found out that all the students who took his class before had kept up the charade, just like we did, letting everyone know how terrible Mr. Graham was, and all along knowing his greatness. We did this not because we disliked him, but because we secretly knew that he wanted us to keep it that way.
Then, one day, he told us to get a dictionary. We’ll be needing it, because from that day forward, any word we didn’t know we had to write down on a flash card, memorize it, and turn it in. We’d be tested on it soon thereafter and if we didn’t get it right, we’d go over the flashcards until we did. Why? To prepare us for college and to make us better at writing, reading, and spelling. So, I used the dictionary my dad had bought me all those years ago, eager to gain knowledge, and perhaps some wisdom, too.
I, on the other hand, wasn’t very good at remembering a lot of the definitions, so I found myself getting off track.
And, of course, Mr. Graham caught me on it.
“Mr. Ellis? Where are your flashcards? And, what and why are you writing?” he questioned, standing over my desk.
On that day, I had a sudden inspiration to write a back story about Pappy, Huck Finn’s alcoholic father. We had been reading that book for a week now, and the way that Mark Twain wrote seemed to get my creative juices flowing. The problem was that the inspiration came in the middle of Mr. Graham’s class while we were reading, and I just had to write it all down.
Snapping his fingers, he ordered, “Give it to me, Mr. Ellis.”
I picked up my paper and gave it to him, fully expecting him to wad it up in a ball and toss it at me. Instead, he quietly read it to himself. I remained silent as he did so, wondering how terrible I was going to get it once he was done. He had a knack of critiquing your writing in front of the entire class.
Mr. Graham cleared his throat. “Class, listen up. Mr. Ellis here wants to read you a story he wrote.”
Oh, no! I thought. More humiliation!
Brian, seeing my dilemma, raised his hand. “I’ll do it! I’ll read it!”
“Is that fine with you, Mr. Ellis?”
“Yes,” came my reply.
Mr. Graham handed Brian the story. A smile appeared across Brian’s face as he started reading. I sat and watched the class, seeing their faces change from a serious demeanor to laughter, grins, and happiness. My story had created a change in the room. The once stuffy, quiet room became an audible dose of focus and comic relief. I didn’t think I was a funny guy, but my writing tickled many in the room, not because it was me who was writing, but because it was Pappy, Huck’s dad, narrating a story about himself and his relationship with Huck.
After the story ended, I heard clapping, not from the class, but from Mr. Graham. “Very good, Mr. Ellis. You’ll write these on your own time from now on?”
I nodded a yes, being very glad it was over and that it wasn’t a catastrophe like I thought it would be. When class finished, he took me aside.
“Are you an artist?” he asked.
Not really knowing his true meaning, I thought about how decent of a drawer I was and shrugged my shoulders. “Kind of.”
“You captured the entire class. That’s a good story. You are an artist. Please keep working at it. I’m here to help.”
And, like usual, I shied away from his help even though he continued to tell me, “All you need to do is ask.”
Two years later, I graduated. And, in those two years, I wasn’t a master at writing by any means (I’m still not), but I have never forgotten his words and what he meant to me.
Now, on a side note, and I’ll get back to my story in a moment, but right after high school graduation, Mr. Graham was fired. He was the most brilliant teacher in school, and pushed his students to reach their potential more than any teacher at that school, but he was let go anyway.
The reason still makes me sick to this day.
During my time at my high school, there were several teachers doing their best to rid of his presence from us students. I know this, because I personally knew one of the teachers leading this terrible cause, but I didn’t pay much attention to it, until the cause actually succeeded. I just didn’t know better, nor did I take it too seriously. If this occurred today, I would have been one of the first to stand up for the rights of Mr. Graham.
The thing is, Mr. Graham was gay.
He hid it as best he could, but it was still rather hard for him to hide, because you could just “tell”. Everyone could. It was in his voice and in his demeanor. He never made any sexual gestures toward any male students and he was as professional as any teacher near and far.
For some reason, that didn’t matter.
The problem was (and still is to this day), that some people had very strong personal beliefs, and because so, they had a strange idea that they had a right to judge Mr. Graham to the point that they would need to create an underground campaign against him. If they could exit him from the school, and in a sense, ruin his life, then they would feel better about themselves.
He loved teaching and when he lost his job, a lot of the students were flabbergasted, just as I was. It didn’t make sense. We all knew he was just about the best teacher you could ever have. The words, “Mr. Graham is gone?”, was muttered on the lips of so many of us that summer. He’d been a pillar for the educational system for twenty plus years. And, he was let go?
Some of my old classmates and I set out to find him during that summer after graduation. We didn’t know where he lived, or even if he was in the same city as us, but look we did. And, we failed miserably. We couldn’t find a trace of him. Had we had the internet, it would have been no problem, but in days where the internet was foreign to us, we had little to no hope. When college arrived, we all went our separate ways and started new chapters in our lives.
Then, strange enough, on a gray and rainy day, I found him. Quite accidentally, of course. It was during my first semester in college of my first year in college. I so happened to walk into a pet store at a local mall to buy fish for my aquarium and there he was. When I saw him I wasn’t sure it was him, but when he turned and saw me, his eyes and lips lit up in a smile. “Mr. Ellis!”
I went into my shy mode, my heart pumping wildly, hoping he wouldn’t ask me any English questions.
I stiffened. “Hi, Mr. Graham.”
“Well, it’s great to see you. How is everything?”
“Umm…good?”
“Excellent. Do you need any help in here?”
“Do you work here?” I should have known from the name tag on his shirt.
I could tell he thought that perhaps I was disappointed in him that such a brilliant man would be working in a pet store. Little did he know that I was hoping he wasn’t thinking such a thing, because I truly didn’t think it was a bad thing that he was working in an awesome pet shop. I didn’t judge people on where they worked. It wasn’t in my nature.
I stammered. “I don’t need any help. Thank you. I’m just looking.”
“Well, let me know if you need any help. I’ll be right over here.”
I walked away and looked at the fish, then turned to leave.
“Leaving?” he asked. “It was really nice to see you again, Mr. Ellis. Say hi to everyone for me.”
“Yes, I will. I hang out with Josh still. I’ll say hi to him for you.”
He grinned. “Have an excellent day, Mr. Ellis.”
“Thanks, and you too.”
With that, I walked out of the store, feeling a little uncomfortable at how I acted. I was a little standoffish, and I knew it was because I didn’t want him to feel embarrassed or ask me any smart questions.
Shortly after our conversation, Mr. Graham passed away. He had a stroke.
That also took me off guard and I remember sitting rather still at my parent’s dining room table the moment I heard about it. I didn’t cry, but my mind went over just about every moment I had with him. Heck, I had him for an entire year when I was Junior in high school, so there was a lot to remember. Not all of the memories were happy, but all of them were very important. He was there to teach me and I was there to learn from him. The great thing about his teachings were that I’m still learning from them today–a mark of a brilliant educator.
“We aren’t here to suffer, Mr. Ellis. We’re here to learn. Once you get that down, you’ll start passing my class,” he once told me.
Part 2 coming soon…
