Chasing Gavin
A world behind wooden doors
When most children would prefer staying under the sun during Saturday afternoons, five-year-old me would choose snuggling in one corner of my room with my best friend Pinocchio rather than hitting the streets with a mud-covered soccer ball. My mother actually suggested that this habit of mine was rather unhealthy (if not unusual) for a kindergarten kid. I only shrugged whenever she asked, coaxed and nagged me out of my quiet abode-after all, what more could she ask for? She's got a child who's barely finished pre-school and needed none of her pep talks to force her to read or study. Only that, the youngster refuses to have anything to do with "outdoors", "exercise" and "touch ball."
This probably explains my eyeglasses and my goofy-ness when it comes to shooting a basketball. My world revolved around Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Dickens, Roald Dahl and C.S. Lewis, who mesmerized me with their tales of fauns, chocolate factories and countries inside wooden closets. I have created make-believe places in my mind more often than I've busted through our kitchen door while proudly narrating to my mom the great game of tag I had with my friends. A lot of people might have considered me as somebody who needed more attention than what I was getting-and what a pathetic little child I was. Despite that, I was as happy as a kid who earned a neat scoop of strawberry ice cream.
My books were my prized possessions-my favorite teachers. They have brought me to Hogwarts, Misselthwaite manor and Farthinggale castle. Though I knew little about cooking, volleyball and basics of gymnastics, I know every nook and cranny of Narnia long before my friends have tried studying geography. I was one among the millions of children who got hooked up to J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series while tracing my roots to grub up a drop of "wizarding" blood flowing through my veins. Yes, reading was my passion, and ever since I was a small child, I could never compare the enthusiasm I experience to anything else whenever I smell the fresh whiff of a new book and feel the smoothness of its pages.
My books have taught me as much as the kind of teachers who can speak, listen, and write information on a blackboard. They share their knowledge in ink on paper, and I was free to understand them in my own pace and style. I become one among them-the characters in the book, and I can feel what they can feel, hear what they can hear, and see the places they can see as clearly as I can see the letters and words upon the pages that make up one breathtaking and uplifting tale.
What I know now is that my favorite teacher does not let me escape from reality, like what other people say whenever somebody is so captivated into reading. Reading allows me to see things in another perspective...a standpoint that is slightly different from what others use. It does not blind me from what is real; rather, it opens doors to consent to even more possibilities. Even for just brief moments with my favorite teacher, I am permitted to create my own world-it is then when I feel completely free.
