Can a book change a life?

No one was around. I went to their houses, one by one, I yelled by their gates. My playmates were not there. I didn't know where they went, for my job was to fetch them before we go to the usual spot.

I was anxious of being left out. How could they not tell me? Why leave in a Saturday morning? I'd waited for a week and then this happened. It was unfair.

I just went home instead.

I picked up a textbook that was about Science. I read it, one page after the other, and for the first time in my life, I felt the urge to finish a book. Not everyone enjoyed it, but I was hooked by the lessons on caterpillar and the whole process of metamorphosis. I also enjoyed the bones, looking at their traces underneath my skin; naming them as I touched them. I loved to have known that pain was our bodies' mechanism to survive. The process was plain, but for me it was climactic. It was a bliss when I can finish a chapter and read to know some more.

So I finished the book. Not in a single sitting, but I finished it before anyone else in the class did.

This was my first affair with books, as I recall.

After that book, everyone thought that I had been pretending all along. They thought I had been playing coy to get rid of the responsibilities of an honor student. I didn't care much, I didn't care that after being branded as "bobo" (idiot) for so long, I became part of the brightest students in the class. I just learned to love reading books and that's what mattered.

I've loved the process so much that I influenced one classmate to do the same. I thought it would be great if he could make it as one of the  top students in class, too. That period, he didn't make it. I waited for another, and he still didn't. In fact, he didn't become an honor student all throughout the time that we were classmates. But it was okay. Because after encouraging him to read, I had made myself great interlocutor, more important, he became a friend who can handle "good" conversations.

After running for an hour this night, I feel the same anxiety I felt when I was left out.

Good thing, I know now what to do. I browse my books, and know that I am secure.After  all, they are more interesting than the skeletal system. Will my life change with the next book?

Maybe yes, or maybe no. Books can only give so much. They are words, and words are cheap without action.

So, I am to know it once more. I will read again for now.



(By the way, my friend might not have made it in the top 10 of the class, but he certainly grabbed the top 8 spot of the Licensure Examination for Teachers. Up until now, he still believes it's no biggie.)