"Every child is different."

These words were used frequently by my mother to give her some comfort as I was growing up. They didn't comfort me, however, but only reminded me that, 'yeah, every child is different, but I'm really different!' If you were in third grade and still couldn't read, would they comfort you?

As a young child, I didn't care for school very much. In the mornings, I would hide in the darkest and scariest part of the non-renovated side of our basement. There I would listen to my mother as she called my name. When she started making threats like no television for a week, I knew I had to give up.

When I wasn't doing school or hiding from it, I was pursuing my interests. Homeschooling did give me the freedom to do that. Most of my interests weren't that constructive; not in an adult sense. One of my favorite past-times was digging giant holes in the sandbox at our neighborhood park and then filling them with water. I also enjoyed watching my brother and our next door neighbor shoot down our very steep street in a red wagon.

Eventually-- as in when my mother caught me-- I had to do my homework. So every weekday morning, my younger brother and I would sit at our desks in our 'school room' in the basement and proceed with our lessons. To be accurate, he would proceed; I would whine and gripe.

It would be a lie to tell you that I was a good student. I wasn't, but if you think about what I've already told you, it would be completely understandable. Would any girl who dragged buckets of water up a giant hill to fill a hole really settle down to something as timid as schoolwork every morning? I think not! I had a reputation to uphold. My status was set on being the 'wild child,' bent on doing what I liked. Tamely doing schoolwork went entirely against my principles.

This problem brought my mother and me into daily clashes. It was hard for me to switch my mind over from 'Why were the Zielke kids trying to find the pennies we buried in the courtyard?' to 'If John has twenty-five airplanes and he gives Juanita six, how many does John have?' If I did consider this problem at all, I was too busy asking 'important questions' such as

"Well, what kind of airplanes are they?"

"Why would anyone need twenty-five airplanes?"

"Who are John and Juanita, anyway, and why should I care about them?"

Even as a child, I tended to over-think simple problems. But mostly I just tried to get out of my schoolwork!

In the end, however, I did my math. I listened to my mother read history and science. And I was willing to read Greek Mythology and Poetry if I would get some stickers for doing them. Yet, it would always come down to that one subject-one so horrible, so painful, and so evil, that Sauron himself must have invented it.

Reading.

My mother would say that dreaded word, and I would then go into convulsions… my own version. I'd lean back in my desk, wiggle around, moan, and pray to God that if he was going to come back someday, let it be now. After life-changing threats - like no computer for a month - I stopped convulsing and 'tried' to learn.

Let me stop here and ask you something. Would you like your reading lessons if they were the most difficult thing in schoolwork for you? As a child, I would have rather tried spending a night alone in the park instead of a single reading session.

It came down to that I just couldn't read. I wasn't ready. My handwriting was horrid and so was my spelling, but I could struggle through them. However, I made no progress in reading. I could pick out words slowly, which really couldn't be called reading.

Reading is one of those things that you either 'get' or you 'don't get.' You can't force someone to read. All you can do is try and wait in the hope and probability that one day the light bulb in their head will turn on.

So the years passed and I was in third grade, barely reading ahead of my brother, Jared, two years younger. No matter how hard my mom and I worked during school, I forgot the words the very next day when it was time to do schoolwork again. To sum matters up, I was an unwilling and hopeless case.

Until my mother brought home Nancy Drew from Sam's Club.

With very little ceremony, she handed me the five book set enveloped in plastic wrapping. I looked from the books to my mother, disbelief written across my face. Was she crazy? Ignoring it, she told me that she used to read them when she was a kid, and, who knows? I might like them, too. My eight-year-old mind considered those words a challenge.

Not put off by the tiny print--although you would have thought I would have been!--I began my quest through 'The Secret of the Old Clock', solving my own problems along the way. For example, I found it hard to concentrate on a single sentence at one time. However, my desire to read the book was so great that I knew I had to find a way or die in the process-- O, the dramatics of my childhood being! So I found one of my 'American Girl Cards' and used it to guide my eyes along the page. It was slow going. I would throw the book across the room if I got angry, but I made progress.

After two weeks, I triumphantly closed the book, confident now that I could read anything. Even as I began to tackle the rest of the Nancy Drew books, I found other material to read. Anything that was halfway interesting, I read. Soon I was able to dispose of the 'guiding card' and consume incredible amounts in one reading session.

That's the story of how the wild child who couldn't read became the young reading-machine. After I discovered the joys of reading, I couldn't stop. Now, eight years later, not only have I read a great many stories and articles, I've written several short stories and articles, run an e-zine for teens, and have published a Fantasy novel for young adults.

If I can do it, you can do it! It needs only one good story to change a life.

I know; for it only took one good story to change my life!

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Meg Davis

To find out more about Pax by Meg Davis visit http://www.booklocker.com/books/1459.html.