Of Mice and Men...And Me and Combs

Of Mice and Men...and Me and Combs

I have never been too interested in reading. I made good grades in school but only read enough to get by. My home overruns with books, my mother is a reader and my childhood toy shelves had books, books, and more books. They never interested me past the age of the bedtime story; my Mom tried everything, books on four wheelers, books on talking animals, books on cars and racing magazines. Still did not interest me. School was not hard because my comprehension was very good, and I would read enough to get by then I discovered in upper elementary school the dreaded accelerated reader points that was part of the reading grade. Needless to say I was not impressed with the accelerated reader program.

The program is supposed to make reluctant readers want to read to achieve points for prizes. Notice that I said is supposed to, because it sure didn't work with me. I was not only not impressed I hated the program until my friend Keaton came up with a wonderful way to get past this; check out books that had been made into movies. The Harry Potter book series really worked well, because you could just watch the movie and then take the AR test. I spent more time looking for books that where movies looking back I could have read twice as many books in the time I spent searching out movie books. However, I was determined I was not going to read because of some program that I was sure was put there to torment unsuspecting students who had much better things to do then read. I managed to get my points and keep my grades up without really having to read very much at all. I had this made. Middle School came and I skimmed by no problem, by this time I had it made. I would just surf the internet looking for book titles that had been turned into movies and keep the list so that I could checked out books made into movies and continued with the program. This worked quite well until high school.

My freshman year wasn't so bad thanks to my brother who actually likes to read and kept notes from the required reading list for English 1. I passed many tests on his notes. Grades stay up, no unnecessary reading. Summer time came and it was time to register for sophomore classes, I tried very hard not to take the English 2 class from Mr. Combs because I had heard from other students that he was hard and had a list of books to read that was a mile long. Just my luck that the other classes where filled, probably with slackers like me, and I had no choice but to take the class under Mr. Combs. I really liked Mr. Combs out of the classroom and enjoyed talking with him in the halls and at lunch, but I knew he would not give any one a grade just because he liked them, and that he expected