Jinxed Universe

Lately, with work and doing a lot of car travel, I've gotten into listening to books on tape. Many of which I have wanted to read, but have lacked the time to read.

Throughout my school years, I was a nerd. Yes, you heard it here, I am a self proclaimed N-E-R-D. I did a ton of reading, I read everything from Star Wars, Louis L'Amour to a thousand page monstrosity called Texas. Once you get into Jr. High, or Middle School, and High School. We are all made to read, "The Classics" and in addition pass off pages that we have read of other various books of our choosing. This seemed an easy task for me because of my nerdyness and addiction to books. But, as I was forced to read with the class, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, and a various amount of strange books I would rather not remember, I began to hate what school seemed to call, "The Classics".

When we began to pick apart the sentence structures and derive the meanings of them and look for the foreshadowing in everything, I began to scream. I began to question who these people are to tell me what the Classics really are. The straw that broke this camel's back was when I was a senior in High School, I had begun to read "The Three Musketeers. I had started this before my last semester of High School and was halfway through it when I decided to use the 600 pages for my reading quota. I approached my teacher and discussed using the book, and was immediately shot down, and was given the famous, "It has been made into a movie" line and was told to find something else. I pleaded with her and asked her if I would compare and contrast the differences between the movie and the book. Then, I was given a curt, "No" and sent on. After that I remember one of the kids in the class reporting on one of the books he had read and telling us about it. The book was a biography of Michael Jordan, "Hello, Earth to Moron!! This guy is on TV every day playing basketball," there was no plot, no foreshadowing, am I missing something. At this point I was mad. Then what further angered me was every dang one of these "Classics" had been made into a movie and we were to watch these movies after we read the books. It was bad enough to read them and now we have to replay the whole stinking book through our eyes!?!?!

Ms. Burrows was her name and was one of these teachers that was just there to get a check. She just wanted to do the bare minimum and screw every good kid over in the process. Unfortunately I wasn't aware enough that I could have been in the AP English or even the Honors English.

Anyways, I came up with a plan. I wasn't going to let this hag screw me over. I figured that they didn't pass records of books I had read from one year to the next. So, I went to the library and checked out twenty 100 page books I had read in 9th grade. I sat down with her the following day and told her I was going to read each one. She passed them all and then the next day I showed up with all twenty and reported to the class on all of them. Knowing if she called foul, I could prove I had read each one along with my parents.

As I reported each on of these books off, I could tell she was getting more and more red in the face and I just kept going. Once I finished, the rest of the class continued reporting on their books and I put all the books in my bag and pulled out my "The Three Musketeers" and made sure she saw I was back to reading my book. I knew I had her, she couldn't do anything to me now.

At the end of the semester, Ms. Burrows gave me what is called a "U", which in the Davis County School District means I was rotten. I ended up having to get a signature from the Assistant Principal to get rid of it and to graduate.

The purpose of this story is to show how stupid this whole idea of who is defining what are "The Classics." Do I see that any of these writings that they are making me read as being of a higher caliber than any of the other books I've read? Lately I've taken a fascination with older literature and I haven't found any of what the schools deem of the classic nature to be so much superior to the books I've been reading.

I think that these teachers are using their powers as educators to brain wash our children into what they want them to think. They have have a captive audience and we have no choice in what they can or cannot read. When my children go to school I will not allow for this type of garbage to happen with my children.