The Tear of a Page

When I was a young boy, my father brought me to school. This was nothing special, as he had done this many times before. This time, however, I had brought a book. I love books, reading, and words in general. Always have. But this book was special since it was the first book I had ever bought with my own money. And when class started, and everyone was talking about their weekend, I was reading my book, and when it was my turn, and the teacher called my name, I did not, could not respond, as I was nose deep in the masterpiece, this Van Gogh of words weaved together. It was the very first fantasy book I had read, “Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief,” and its setting amazed me and my 7-year-old brain. It let me connect with another world, one where I could feel the emotions that ran through the pages as if they were my own. The ink was raised against my fingers as I traced the parts that were particularly interesting to me and the way the pages themselves felt appreciated. Worn but new at the same time. And the surprise and disappointment I felt when the teacher came up to my desk and took the book away for the rest of the day tore something in me. 

Later, when I got my book back, the teacher, whose name I cannot remember, said something that I will always remember. “You gotta live through yourself and not through your books.” This was relevant at the time since whenever I was not running around like a little energetic rabbit, I was always in my books, absorbing all the information I needed to learn from them and blocking others out. And now, I realize what that teacher meant when he said that I needed to learn from him and not just from my books, but people as well. Books can only teach so much, and they offer no opportunity to put it into practical application, the social skills that one needs, the ability to understand why a person did something, to read them, and learn them. This is what he meant when he told me to learn from him. However, I lost some of my trust in him that day, and with almost all people but my friends and family, because at the moment, I was a 7-year-old child who had just had his book taken from him with no explanation until almost a full school day later. On that day, one of my pages tore the one that represented my trust, my faithfulness, and my ability to place that trust in others and not be so jumpy with taking it away. The page was never the same after,  even if it has mended somewhat, but I still remember how my classmates snickered when my book was taken. The whole school seemingly knew by lunch and people talking about it. And that just tore the page further.

Today, I can see how this happened and that most of the school did not know, but the people who knew were in my class, and as I was always around them, it seemed so much bigger than it was. I never trusted people with my books after that, even going as far as not to tell them the title of the book I was reading. But I have been able to slowly, over a decade, learn how to trust people, to give them a chance, to let them explain, to show me their torn pages, and maybe let me help them fix the pages so that eventually, their book will be whole again. Even if they never come back the way they were before, it is still better than having a torn page.