Finding myself on the page

(Reposting a previous blog with some slight editing and an updated ending)

When I was very young starting out in kindergarten and first grade, I hated school. I struggled to make friends and get used to a new routine. When the lessons really started taking off, I found myself falling behind my classmates.

I may have hated school, but I loved sports. I loved, even at that young age, the ups-and-downs of baseball or football. I loved the story-telling nature of the sports world.

So when one day I found a bright yellow hardcover board book with a kid in football gear not much older than me on the cover, I fell in love. The book titled Davy Plays Football told the story of a little boy who had to fight to get a chance to play with the big kids in his neighborhood and in the end catches the winning touchdown.

I read the book every night. It was a short read, but I would read and re-read it until I fell asleep. I loved that Davy was small like me, but played a crucial part in winning the game. When it came time for my turn for show-and-tell, I took the book to school and read it to my friends. In my mind, I was Davy, fighting for my chance with the big kids.

The makings of something bigger

I’m not sure what clicked, but I figured out that if I loved this book, I might find another book that I loved just as much. I soon started to pick up more and more books. They usually had a sports theme, but it still got me reading.

I went through books faster than my mother could get me to the library. I still struggled with math and science, but I was rarely without a book. Several years later, I stumbled across the Danny Dunn series.

These were thicker books than Davy Plays Football and many of my sports-themed books. The content was different too. Danny didn’t play a lot of football or baseball. Instead, he was a precocious and headstrong kid, who routinely got himself into and out of trouble. In short, he was nothing like me.

But I loved how he used his mind. I loved the book titles too with names like Danny Dunny and the Heat Ray; Danny Dunn and the Fossil Cave; Danny Dunn and the Voice from Space to name a few.

Danny helped open up a whole new world of science and math. It took work, but my grades in these classes started to improve. From those early beginnings, I would go on to have a deeper appreciation for math and science even went onto to take Physics and Calculus my senior year of high school.

Now to the present

I haven’t turned the pages to “Davy” or even one of the “Danny Dunn” books in decades. We’ve gone our separate ways, but I still think about them regularly in turning me into a lifelong reader. When I’m in a meeting and I question how something works and if a smarter, more efficient process exists, I’ll think of Danny Dunn.

When I listen to the news and hear about the folks, who feel oppressed or left out, whether they come from LGBTQ or any other group, I think of Davy and how he fought his way into the line-up. I remember how I felt lost until I read the book and felt like I had found “my people” for the first time in my life.

Yes, books can make a difference.