I don't remember the plot of The Cay.
I remember the cover.
"It took blindness to make Phillip truly see."
I must have been in elementary school. I was reading it in an empty classroom, one of those quiet pockets of the day where everyone else had already filtered out. I read out loud back then. Not loudly. Just enough to hear it.
Hearing the words anchored me. When I read silently, my brain would sprint ahead. I'd be thinking about where the story was going instead of what was happening. Reading out loud slowed everything down just enough to stay in it.
So that's what I did.
Until someone heard me from the hallway.
I don't remember who it was. I don't remember the exact words. I just remember the tone, amused, confused, maybe a little mocking. Like I was doing something strange.
It wasn't a big scene.
Just a moment.
And I stopped.
Not defiantly.
Not dramatically.
Just quietly.
I don't think I decided, "I will never do this again."
I think I just absorbed the signal:
That's weird. Don't do that.
And I didn't.
Years later, in college, I convinced myself I was bad at reading. I'd stare at textbooks and feel my focus slipping.
I'd stress about how long it took me. Eventually I stopped trying to read chapters at all and just studied the PowerPoint slides. It worked. I adapted.
That's kind of a theme.
When something doesn't work socially, I try to optimize around it.
What I didn't realize until much later was that nothing was wrong with my reading in the first place. I had a tool. It worked. I dropped it because someone laughed.
No trauma.
No origin story.
Just a small recalibration that compounded over time. I could have kept reading out loud. I just thought I wasn't supposed to.
I still don't remember The Cay.
But I remember how I read it.
by chuckdooley