Final Draft

How Reading Has Shaped My Past, Present and Future

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”   

- Dr. Seuss 

Solid reading skills help you in any facet of life, whether it is following a recipe in a cookbook or reading signs on your journey home.  From the time I was five years old I wanted to be a great reader. My father told Danny the child, that solid reading skills were the key to being smart. I of course went to my first day of Kindergarten anxious to learn how to read. I came home after the first day disappointed. I threw a temper tantrum because Miss Smith, my teacher, didn't teach me how to read. My dad came home that night and after I told him I still couldn't read, pulled the morning edition of The Boston Globe from his brief case and began to help me read. 

Reading became an obsession for me, I began to beat my dad to the mailbox in the morning to get the newspaper. I'd read the paper by myself on the twenty minute bus ride to school, I had taught myself how to read within that first month. I became a huge sports fan, reading the sports columns of Boston newspaper legends Bob Ryan and Jackie McMullen. I also memorized baseball statistics and attempted to duplicate the writing styles of the columnists. This was my first foray into journalism, I'd stray away from journalism for a long time.

As I grew up, I still read a lot. I really loved non-fiction; books about American history and the Holocaust and of course books on the history of sports. Like most kids, I really enjoyed the Harry Potter series and unlike most people, I still re-read the series one or two times a summer. Also like most kids, I eventually outgrew reading as I got into television, video games, hanging out with friends and playing sports. One sport in particular came to be the most important thing in my life, basketball. 

Basketball was everything in middle school. I would go to school, then play basketball till dusk. I played on travel teams, AAU teams and even had my own individual skills competition. I worked my tail off, I wasn't the greatest athlete, but I was quick enough and my mind was always one play ahead of my opposition. I played myself from being a kid who was lucky to get on the court in 5th grade to being a starter and one of the best players in our grade by 7th grade. In 8th grade, I won the Coaches Award, for the hardest working player, and easily won a Shooting Championship. Point is, I was a good player and a good kid.

Fast forward two years later, and the kid with the tireless work ethic who loved to read had become the busy teenager who had better things to do. My sophomore year, English teacher assigned my class book after book. I read some of the books, like To Kill a Mockingbird, Flowers for Algernon and Catcher and the Rye, but I used Sparknotes for the rest.

Junior year, I had the same teacher and she made sure we read our books. Our first assignment was to read a book about a person in a career we might like to pursue. One of my dad's best friend is ABC's Bob Woodruff. Woodruff succeeded broadcasting legend Peter Jennings in 2005 as the host of World News Tonight but had his tenure cut short a month later when he was wounded badly in Iraq. Woodruff (pictured right with his kids) was placed in a medically induced coma for 36 days as he recovered from his head trauma.

Bob's road to recovery and career in journalism were documented in his memoir written by himself and his wife Lee. The book was called In an Instant: A Family's Journey of Love and Healing. Seeing the toll that journalism had on Bob's family even before his injury,  I wrote my essay on how I could never be a journalist. This was my second foray into journalism.

The most important thing going on at the time in my life was my varsity basketball tryouts, nothing was more important to me than contributing to my high school's varsity team. I had done what was asked of me to earn my spot. I had almost made the team as a sophomore, but ended up captaining the JV team. I spent that fall playing excellently for my school's fall league team. The next logical step was to fulfill the dream I had since the first time I played organized basketball, play varsity basketball for North Andover High School.

A few weeks before tryouts, I went to get the required physical to participate in athletics at North Andover High School. After twenty minutes, I was done with my physical, but my doctor ordered me to drive down the road to a separate facility to get an echocardiogram because he felt inconsistencies in my heart beat. The next day, I received my results. 

My doctors classified my heartbeat as irregular, and I was forbidden to exercise for fear of what I could do to my body. For the next two weeks, I went to multiple experts and specialists as they tried to figure out what was wrong with my heart. The doctors forbade me from exercise and anything that might strain my cardiovascular system, resulting in me gaining 15 pounds. I underwent two separate EKG’s, which are essentially ultrasounds of your heart. Those EKG’s were on consecutive Tuesdays, that will be important later.

I was finally cleared to play one day before tryouts. My heart was tilted, but I was in no major danger. I went to tryouts the next night with the daunting task of making the most competitive team North Andover had to offer, a team that has been to forty plus Massachusetts State Tournaments in a row, out of shape and rusty. I had lost all my explosiveness and was exhausted after the first drill each night of tryouts. After the third and final night of literally fighting for my dream, coach pulled a couple of us over and told us what he thought of us as people, not as players. With tears in his eyes, he told me I might have been the hardest player he ever had to cut. He told me I was the last cut because he couldn’t take on the burden of responsibility of having me on the team.

It wasn't my personality or play that was the burden, I could easily get myself back into shape and be the player I had been, instead I was a victim of an unfortunate circumstance. Just six months earlier, a North Andover student named Alex Farese (pictured left) died suddenly after crossing the finish line at a track meet. He had an undiagnosed heart defect that was the cause of his death. Even though I was completely healthy, I had been grouped together with a classmate that died because of a hole in his heart. I felt as if I was a victim, and went home that night too shocked to cry, my dream dashed, I was left to wonder what now?

Over the next couple days, I had to deal with nagging questions like “what happened?” and “are you all right?” I began to avoid people because I felt they were always pitying me. An honor roll student, I suddenly failed pre-calculus as grades became insignificant to me. The idea that something so pivotal to your life can be taken from you so quick and unjust infuriated me. I became irritable with my parents and all others who were trying to raise my spirits. I honestly hated myself. No matter what I did, I kept thinking about what I was going to remember about high school in twenty years, and if my parents were lying when they said they were proud of me.

On top of that, I found out my best friends, my former teammates, weren't really my friends. Like me, basketball was their social life, but they changed as they became members of the team. They were now Varsity basketball players and suddenly were much more popular. They also decided I couldn't come along for the ride, and would ignore my phone calls. I caught them in so many lies,  so much had changed since the 15 of us stood up our semi-formal dates our freshman year and held a basketball tournament that lasted till three in the morning. They decided since I no longer was apart of their team on the court,  I was no longer their friend. The girl I was with at the time even left me for one of my so-called friends. I was going through the most trying time of my life and I had literally no one to turn to.

I didn't know it at the time, but I exhibited all the symptoms of clinical depression.

To add insult to injury, I had to catch up on the reading I had missed in English class. My teacher,  had started reading our english class Tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Albom, every Tuesday. I took Tuesdays with Morrie home and with nothing else to do, locked myself in my room and read. It turned out to be sweet therapy. In the book, Albom (pictured above right) chronicles his favorite teacher's physical demise as a result of Lou Gehrig’s disease. As Morrie Schwartz (pictured left) withered away, he got mentally stronger. The book is chock full of his short aphorisms that reveal his wit and courage. They taught me a life lesson that I greatly needed.

“Mitch I don’t allow myself any more self pity than that. A little each morning a few tears and that’s all.” (57). 

If Morrie could lie on his death bed and still find optimism, then I, a healthy teenager, could surely find optimism in my own life. I still had a whole life ahead of me in which I could find my destiny. Morrie did not have that opportunity and neither did Alex Farese. I immediately felt shame for thinking I was a victim; Farese was a victim, I was just unlucky. I realized life was so much bigger than what I did in high school. I still had and still have so much life to live.

That fact was reinforced by the next piece of literature we read in English class,  Death of a Salesman. In the play, one of the main characters Biff Loman represented those sad individuals who peak in high school. Biff was the star football player in high school and only concentrated on being popular and well-liked because in his and his father's opinion was all that a man needed to be successful in business. Biff who struggles to hold down a reliable income, is contrasted by his neighbor Bernhard, who was nowhere near the socialite Biff was in high school, but worked hard and became a wealthy lawyer. 

I distinctly remember raising my hand so I could read for the part of Bernhard in class one day.

It became apparent to me that there were much more important things in life than helping my high school win a state championship and I decided I would not try out again. Truthfully,  I didn't miss basketball and I surely did not miss being teammates with those guys. I was now at the point in life where I had to reconstruct my life.

I got my social life back in the spring of my junior year. For months my only friends were my golden retrievers, Murphy and Shamus. I love my dogs as much as any human, but it was time to venture out of the house once again My best friend Matt, (gray sweatshirt on right) who is the best basketball player in our town, made things easier by apologizing to me. He stopped hanging out with the old crew and together we found a new group of friends that are still some of my best friends. I then found a new group of friends that I introduced him to and before I knew it, I was even more popular than I was when I played basketball.

My house is the place where everyone goes now, we don't meet up in a gym.

I was the happiest I had ever been in high school at the start of senior year, but there was still something missing. That void, left by not playing basketball, remained. I tried playing pick-up basketball, but I missed being a member of a team. I thought about football which was my best sport, but I had never played at the high school level because I got a tip that our coach and training staff forced players to play on concussions. (That tip turned out to be true, two of my friends above, Kevin and Ben (two farthest to the left) are suffering from headaches due to their concussions to this day.) I needed to get involved somehow and I finally decided on an old friend that had been waiting for me for a long time. I went to a meeting for the school newspaper and fortunately for me, they needed a sports writer. This was my third of what is now too many forays in journalism to count.

Whether it is about Morrie, Biff Loman, Bob Woodruff or former Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra I am at my best when I am reading. Reading has impacted my life in times of struggle and at times when I'm flourishing. Books have helped me stop wallowing away in my failures, and to grow from them. They've taught me that I'm bright, mature, strong and capable of anything. You can always gain something from reading if you give it a chance.

My senior year of high school was the best time of my life. It was cruel that I finally figured myself out just as high school was ending, but I knew it meant I was ready for new challenges. Most high school graduates are nervous to go to college, I knew I'd thrive. I had been through the worst and emerged stronger, what could I possibly be afraid of?

It is ironic to me, that Albom, a great sports writer, wrote a book that wasn’t about sports and it aided me in pursuing sports writing. I’ve shown a great aptitude for it and am now sports editor for a magazine at Ohio University. I still read a lot because reading good writing is the key to becoming a good writer.  My parents have never been prouder of me and most importantly I've never been prouder of myself. My experiences have made me who I am and I'm content with who that person is.

“Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.” 
― Dr. Seuss

Works Cited

Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. 1st ed. New York: Viking Press, 1949. Print.

Woodruff, Lee, and Bob Woodruff. In an Instant: A Family's Journey of Love and Healing. New York: Random  
           House Inc., 2008. Print.

Albom, Mitch. Tuesdays with Morrie. New York: Doubleday, 1997. Print.