Lauren Leto - Judging a Book by Its Lover: A Field Guide to the Hearts and Minds of Readers Everywhere

The Justice League of Ex-Teachers of Mine

THE FIRST BOOK I ever loved was a book about a monster in a childs closet. I had a hard time learning how to read when I was in first grade. I remember feeling overwhelmed by the fields of letters, the spaces, the punctuation. I have a clear memory, however, of being brought into the hallway one day by my teacher. She opened a book and walked me through, slowly, how to string everything together and follow, sentence by sentence, a cohesive story. And it was a garish story. The kind of story that childrens book authors seem pathologically drawn to: a kid is utterly terrified by a monster, who, inexplicablywhen the kid finally tries to talk to the monsterturns out to be friendly. Easy enough, I thought, and continued on rereading that same book every day for the rest of first grade.

In second grade, lightning struck when my teacher told me I was good at reading. If you tell an eight-year-old she has a talent for something, shell never give it a rest; you tell her, Oh, youre funny! and the child will keep making raspberries and pretending to be a monkey until you want to rip her arms out. You say, Wow! Youre pretty good at basketball, and it will end in tears as you finally pull him by his hair off the court. Tell her, Hey! Youre a great singer! and youre in for ityoull get a flouncing bundle emitting unbridled music-like monstrosities whom youll have to stab in the heart before itll be quiet ever again.

My astute parents had up to this point avoided telling me I was good at anything. Our nightly dinners were spent reinforcing the message Its not funny to my brother, for good measure repeatedly reminding my sister she should stop drawing everywhere, and me, my directive was to stop imagining things. But Mr. Booker, that unsympathetic man, complimented me one day on my reading skills. It was all downhill from there. When my parents figured out what the teacher had done, they marched into the principals office to complain. She does nothing but read! She has no friends! Her nose is always in a book ! Meeting only silence and bewilderment there, they picketed the PTO: It cant be healthy! Reading all the time ! What if she needs glasses someday?! Boys dont make passes at girls who wear glasses!

Unfortunately for them, I had been told I was good at reading and I was not going to stop. I read in my closet with all the lights off and nothing but a flashlight, finally coming out only after my mom had, in an abrupt state of panic, called the police. I read in the bathtub. In the process I used up all the hot water because a leaky drain necessitated that the water be left running for the tub to stay full. My brother and sister took years of ice-cold showers because I couldnt put down anything from Animorphs to Nabokov (I still do thistheyve asked me to stop coming home for the holidays). Go outside and make some friends, my mom would say with a sigh. Id try to please her by Rollerblading in a circle in our driveway while reading. Unsurprisingly I didnt make many friends that way. I refused to ride my bike to school because there was no way to read while biking. Instead Id walk in an ambling fashion with my face in a book, resulting not once but twice in my somehow arriving home with only one shoe on. This needs to stop! You have a problem! my father cried. He sent me to summer camps to straighten me out but Id hide contraband in my suitcase and spend the week away from home in Narnia.

Teachers in subsequent grades would complain to Mr. Booker, that innocent man, If you had just kept your mouth shut shed be listening in class instead of hiding her face behind a book! They quickly banded together, the Justice League of Ex-Teachers of Mine, in order to throw a side-eye at anyone who dared encourage children, lest they turn out like me. They met every Monday morning, to start the week off right, in the teachers lounge. The password to get in was mediocrea key element of their mission statement: Keep them mediocre, keep our jobs easy. Theyd sit and stew in there. Ive run out of stickers to put on her reading chart. This child is a drain on the system; my sticker budget has run dry! Theyd join my parents at the PTO picket. sticker hog! their signs cried out.

By the time I was in high school, the attendance list had grown so large they had to move the meetings to the gym. Hi, Im Ms. Washington and I was Laurens teacher in tenth grade. One time, I had to send her home because she was crying about losing her annotated copy of Catch-22 . Children shouldnt have to miss class because theyre sad about a book. Its disgusting and subversive. Hi, Im Mr. Young and I was Laurens teacher in ninth grade. Once, she turned in what was supposed to be a book report but instead amounted to a terrifyingly detailed account of J. D. Salingers life. I am sincerely worried she might be stalking him. Im Mr. Montague and I was Laurens twelfth-grade teacher. I was unable to get her to stop laughing when Lear s Earl of Gloucester dives off the cliff. It confused the other students and I had to give her detention.

Upon graduation, no one was sad to see me go: Shes somebody elses problem now! I bet she doesnt finish college, shell be too busy reading. You cant while away all your time reading in college!

IM AN ANXIOUS PERSON. My guess (gathered from an unscientific survey of fellow readers and the uneducated opinions of my family) is that this may be the result of years of overexposure to fictional worlds and underexposure to real-world activities such as recess, school dances, and cocktail parties. Im not very comfortable in settings and situations most people take for granted as part of the comings and goings of everyday life. For example, traveling: traveling with me is an experience I wouldnt want to wish on anyoneand I go to great lengths to save friends and family the trouble. Accompanying me on planes and in cars is nightmarish. If it werent for the helpful tricks that Ive come to rely on, I dont know how Id get anywhere. Ive developed ways to deal with my anxiety, tics that keep the pressure down and keep the terror at bay. These quirks are my dirty little secrets. Sometimes its just two stiff drinks at the airport TGIF before boarding; other times the situation calls for more drastic actions to divert my attention from my mounting anxiety over the prospect of hurtling forward on a road or through the sky. I need something a little more potent.

Im telling you this because I want to be as honest as possible with you. Janet Evanovich books are my booze; I cant board a plane without checking the airport bookstore to find the newest tale of Stephanie Plum. If Ive read all the available Evanovich, I have to pick the next-easiest, sleaziest thing. I started and finished Twilight on red-eye trips from Detroit to Los Angeles and back; I conquered New Moon before touchdown from New York to San Francisco. I wept over Idaho while reading the first Hunger Games . At these moments I need my reading easy and quick; I need to turn the pages without knowing it. I dont have the bandwidth to wonder about the underlying meaning of the exact word chosen to phrase how one turned around or analyze just why an object was described in a certain way. I need distraction, not deep thoughts.