Unexpected Consequences
It was a rainy fall day, and I was in the backseat of a cramped Kia Rio covered with fast food wrappers, the scent of stale chicken nuggets and old orange soda sticking to my seat. This was how many of my adventures with my best friend Julian began. I was getting used to the chaos, there was something familiar and comforting about that disheveled backseat. We had been best friends for quite some time and shared a mutual excitement in of all things Pokémon, mainly the cards. However, this particular day he showed me something new. He said, “It’s a Pokémon game with no cards and played on something called, a Game-Boy!” He pulled it out of his bag, and made me promise to give it back when we got to his house without…show more content… I had no idea what second grade was, since I had just started preschool. How could I learn to read at second-grade level? Perhaps, I could talk to a second grader, and they could teach me. At dinner, I asked my parents about it, they said, “We want you to be reading by yourself without our help.” They didn’t want to sit around deciphering text for me; at the time, I couldn’t understand why. In retrospect, it would be annoying for them, because when I get into something new, I tend to obsess and this would have taken a lot of time for them to help me understand something they has absolutely no interest in. While I finished my dinner, at the large kitchen table, I asked them to teach me to read. My mom said we would go ask the librarian the next…show more content… The program was called Funnix, I followed along with a lady on the computer, and talking phonetic animals, which improved my reading skills rapidly. I remember begging to do three of four lessons each day and within three months, I was indeed reading at the second-grade level. Getting my very own Game Boy was a thrill and a real accomplishment, I even got a special dark blue cover that had a pocket for my cartilages. I spent many Saturdays battling with Julian and have many fond memories with the device; it sits in a dusty back corner of my closet reminding me that I can attain my goals. My love of reading far surpassed my enjoyment of the Game Boy, even before I got it. I found that reading was more exciting than Pokémon battling. For me, reading a whole series of books was a real accomplishment, and I was willing to read any that held my interest. I fondly remember reading all The Magic School Bus books, The Magic Tree House series, the Harry Potter serious, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings. My favorite book as third grader, was Steven Hawking’s, A Brief History of Time; I was unwilling to part with the library copy, so we had to buy the Library