Daunting Dolphin #1

They were always a bit worried about me, really. It was the combination of speed and lethargy. My mind seemed to race, but my mouth couldn’t keep up. I slurred and stuttered and got so excited that I would bounce on my toes until my hair fell into my face and no one could see my face. I was a little mop on top of a chubby little body, not a student.

My siblings were never this way. They sat quietly and read, even if my older sister moved her lips and used her fingers to track the words until she was 10 or so. They were good readers, good students and good speakers. I garbled all of my words so badly that no one outside my family knew what I was talking about. And I couldn’t really read.

To be fair, I could read enough to justify my place in the first grade. That’s not really saying much, but I did know the alphabet and I had a pretty good grasp on the idea that spelling was not optional. On birthday presents I tended to sign my name backwards and used capital letters as decorative elements whenever I fancied. At least I knew that letters meant something.

I hated reading, though: I couldn’t sit still for it. Even now, if I read something I find interesting or amusing, I hope I’m in the room alone: I cannot prevent myself from interrupting others to share lines like “he screamed like an angel that had just discovered why he was on the wrong side.” Back then, I never read far enough into a single book to find lines like that. Lines that seared across my mind and made me want to pick up a paintbrush (until I figured out that I can’t paint; now I reach for my pen and paper).

My mother did her best- I had the entire Boxcar Children book set in all their insipid glory on my shelf. My siblings had loved them. Each night I would pretend to read before I went to bed. Instead I wandered off to explore the edges where my mind curled back onto itself. It was easy to get away with it in school. Few teachers were willing to mentally translate the slurred and stuttering speech into something comprehensible.

It didn’t last. Work with a speech therapist toned down one line of miscommunication, and the stories about what happened to liars prevented intentional miscommunications. I had to learn how to sit still long enough to actually read or face my teachers’ wrath.

I was lucky. I found the right book at the right time. We were allowed to choose any book we wanted and bring it into class for individual reading time. As a first grader, these tended to be simplistic books along the same lines as the hated Boxcar Children books. But I found the right book: in the dusty and slightly creepy basement, hidden among the rest of the beat-up old books I found a slim volume entitled Shadow Castle by Marian Cockrell.

It was fantasy, of course. It was like a daydream that had been written down by someone who had mastered the strange arts of spelling and capitalization. It was perfect. I devoured it and demanded more. I could communicate now and I knew what I wanted. My teachers wavered between excited and bemused until settling on placation. They recommended books and allowed me to read what I wanted.

Shadow Castle did what nothing else had been able to do, and I learned how to sit still and read. I learned how to read because I found books that let my mind explore in the same bizarre places it took itself naturally. Eventually my enjoyment of reading expanded, and I could stomach the idea of reading assigned books. Shadow Castle was lost in the shuffle.

I spent years looking for another copy of that book. Without the internet, an out-of-print not particularly popular book was difficult for a child to find. I didn’t get my hands on a new copy until I was in high school.

It was terrible. The book was absolute drivel in a way that only saccharine children’s books can be. It’s on my bookshelf now. It has pride of place between Macbeth and Never Let Me Go. I read it every summer.