On reading vs. non-reading: The price?

What if the very best thing you ever did in school came on your first day?

Nate Bargatze is about in the middle of his wonderful set for “Your Friend, Nate Bargatze” when he tiptoes into something he feels ashamed about. He makes us laugh, he’s a master at that. But I think, if you listen, between the lines, there’s regret there.

“I went to career day for my daughter’s school. So I was hoping to sit at a table alone. They put me at a table with a surgeon. I think they did it on purpose to show the kids, ‘Here’s the difference in reading.”

“I don’t read. I think that matters. Reading is the key to smart, I believe. I don’t do it. I think it’s caught up to me. I like the idea of reading. I even buy books. But you open them up and it’s the mostwords. And it’s like what are you talking about? And they don’t let up. Every page. More words. How ‘bout you put some blank pages in there?… My eyes are good readers, I feel so bad. But they’re attached to this dumb brain. “Aren’t you getting any of this, man? That’s the fifth time we’ve read this sentence, let’s try another one.”

An excerpt from “Your Friend, Nate Bargatze” available - and recommended - on Netflix.

I guess I’m the anti-Nate, then. Though my regular readers - chipping up to 929 (thanks, kids!) - will certainly attest to my breaking off a good joke now and then, would it cause me to drop in your estimation if I shared a story from my schooling days? And what if, and this might be the saddest part of all, I never did anything in a dozen years of school and five years of college that I could guarantee surpassed it. Put that in your educational pipe and smoke it.

In Brookline, Grades One and Two were held, trapped might be more like it, in an ancient, gray wooden two-room school house. The wood was so old and weathered that you could break off pieces of it if you tried. What else were we to do at recess?

There was no Jungle Jim, no Slide, no See Saw, no indication that kids were expected to play there - (which may have been the intent). Just a sandy square with little very occasional bits of crap grass breaking through (they didn’t want to be there either) intersected by a thick wide cement sidewalk that as you walked on it resembled walking the plank of a pirate ship. And this was the FIRST DAY.

The other immediate problem it posed was when my mother dropped me off, there was a schoolyard full of kids I DID NOT KNOW. Not a one. Everybody was dressed up, the girls were in dresses and those shiny little buckle shoes that made a noise on the wooden floor. A white-haired lady in a beige shirt and white blouse came out on the cement steps with a big brass bell and rang it.

“Let’s go,” she said. “First day of school begins.”

If you were in First Grade, you took a left turn so I followed a few other kids I didn’t know. Everybody was looking around at one another, hoping for a familiar face perhaps or at least a friendly one. I took a seat in Row Two, a couple seats back from the front. I didn’t want to look THAT eager to learn.

Our teacher introduced herself at Helen Nutting and you could tell she’d been around a long time, maybe taught Lincoln. She had silver hair, parted in the middle, small clouds on either side of her head around those teardrop-style glasses with little sparkles around the lenses. She sorta smiled at us, her cheeks wrinkled up and she looked around the room at us. And you could see her thinking, “Now which ones of these little bastards are going to give me trouble.”

Many years later, that look would cross my face, too on the first day of school. But that was a long way off. Fortunately.

She stood up behind her desk. She read off the roll. Stumbled over my name, naturally.

“It’s No-gow-ski, Mrs. Nutting.”

“Thank you, John. It is John, isn’t it?” she smiled.

I nodded. This was going to be so much fun.

“OK, children,” she said. “There’s a book on your desk. It’s a Dick and Jane Reader especially designed for our First Graders. So we’re going to go around the room and ask you to read as much as you can. If you can’t read anything just yet, that’s fine. We don’t have Kindergarten in Brookline so that’s OK. We’re here to teach you.”

So we began. And it was slow. I mean S-L-O-W. The first row of kids, maybe five or six kids, barely got through a whole sentence though some did recognize a word or two.

We got to my row, the first kid couldn’t read anything. The next one managed “Look” and “Tim.” That was it. Then it was my turn.

And, well, I whipped through two pages so quickly, the class was aghast. Heads were turning, mouths were dropping, kids were twisting in their seats.

Mrs. Nutting walked to the front of my desk. She wasn’t exactly smiling but didn’t seem mad, either.

“John,” she said softly, putting an old hand on my shoulder tenderly. “I need you to go read to the Second Grade. Right now.”

Of course, I was embarrassed. Also excited. I definitely didn’t know any of those kids and that Second Grade teacher Mrs. Mildred Montrone was the size of about four of us with huge arms. But I got up, everybody in the class staring at me and walked into Second Grade.

“Mrs. Montrone,” Nutting said, leaning into the classroom, heads all turning in her direction. “We have us a reader. His name is John No-gow-ski. I asked him to come read to your class.”

“Fine,” Montrone said, pointing to an empty seat. “Go ahead. Keep on going.”

Why could I read then? I guess my Mom and Grandmother must have taught me. I don’t honestly remember either one of them reading to me. Maybe I should. And that was Day One of my Education. I guess you could say I peaked early.

Sorry, Nate. But time IS on your side. And hell, you just WROTE a book. Wonder if you read it?

This is it, where the trouble all started in First Grade, Brookline, New Hampshire.

This is me, Row Two, Seat Two, four grades later, hands folded. Still brilliant.

John Nogowski is the author of several books, two on music: “Bob Dylan: A Descriptive, Critical Discography” and a similar volume due on Neil Young later this year or early next.; two on baseball “Diamond Duels” and “Last Time Out,” a book on teaching Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” at a minority school and is currently at work on a book on Bruce Springsteen. (I think he’s going to be big someday!) All his works are available on Amazon or by order from your local bookstore.