Please Sir, I want some more

     Our small North Boston did not have a supermarket, so Mom would go to Hamburg once a week to get groceries from the A&P. When I was in junior high, Mom shopped, I think it was mostly Thursday nights – I don't know how it got scheduled that way or how I even remember this, but I often asked if she would drop me at the Hamburg library while she shopped, and then Mom would pick me up again when she was on her way home. We did not have cell phones then, so I don't know how I knew to go outside when it was time to get picked up – just gauging by the time, I guess.

      Sometimes I did homework at the library or extra research, which would have meant consulting the encyclopedias, gasp. And I looked for books to check out and read during the week. At some point I discovered the mystery section, and I read as many mystery books as I could – some of them had mildly racy scenes, and I felt that I was getting away with something – naughty stuff between two innocent looking book-covers!

       In ninth grade English class, Mrs. Dye wanted us to read one book of our choice each month, and the subsequent book report assignment was to write about one scene from the book. Well, since I was such an avid reader, I thought I could wow Mrs. Dye from the vast collection of stuff I had read at the Hamburg library from the fiction department – not necessarily from the mystery section, but since the report only had to be about only one scene, I knew I could make even a mystery book sound really good!

       The first month I turned in what I thought was a wonderful report. But I didn't get an A on it. I tried harder the next month, but again, no A. I scratched my head trying to figure out what it would take to get an A from this woman.

       And the next month I checked Oliver Twist out of the library. Perhaps I could wow Mrs. Dye with a classic? Now, hated is too strong a word – but I very much disliked Oliver Twist. I could not even finish reading it. But since we only had to write about one scene......I wrote about one of the scenes I had read – probably the please Sir, I want some more porridge episode, and I turned in the report and received an A.

       I did feel guilty about this, but also ecstatic that I had discovered the key to getting an A on my book reports. After that I read Lorna Doone, Ivanhoe, and the Three Musketeers. I actually finished those – in fact I fell in love with them! I stayed away from Dickens and looked for more Dumas. I read Treasure Island and oh what fun! But when I started Black Arrow, another Robert Louis Stevenson story, I could barely get through enough to be able to report on one scene. I think that of all the classics I read for book reports in ninth grade, I finished only half of them, turned in something for all of them. And I got all A's.

       For years I thought I had put something over on Mrs. Dye because I had figured out what it took to get an A from her when half of the books I had not even read all the way through. But after ninth grade and the discovery of the classics – they were the only recreational books I read for the next few years – absorbing all that which had made them so enduring, enriching my mind and soul. Loving them – even learning to appreciate Dickens himself after a while. And so it was years later that I realized in essence, Mrs. Dye had put something over on me – who cares about how I got those A's? She had gotten me to read the classics – and the ones I really did read – that's what really mattered.

       Perhaps I should give Black Arrow another try.

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