When I was a kid, I read a lot of Shakespeare’s works. When I say that, I usually get some rolled eyes. “Yeah, okay, we see you smartie.”

But it wasn’t like that.

I was a voracious reader as a kid. So much so that in elementary school, the teachers would deal with me by sending me to the library where I could read instead of disrupting the class.

I guess now they might diagonose that or something, but at the time, that was just how life was. I’d finish the work for the class and go to the library to read until the next class.

When I went to middle school everything changed. Suddenly we had way more classes and we were shifted between them with bells ringing and I… was not adapting well.

On top of just the schedule changes, the kids were older. They’d fight in the hallways. We had lockers. It felt like utter chaos to me. My days of quietly reading my books were gone.

So my grades TANKED.I was in gifted and talented and I wasn’t keeping up. There were threats to kick me to regular classes which meant, of course, that I was grounded.

No, that is not a logical thing to do, but it’s just how things were done at the time.

When I got home every day in sixth grade, I could not watch tv. I could not go outside and play. I could do my homework and/or read.

Unlike my cozy nook in elementary school, I did not have a whole libarary to explore at home. But what we did have was one giant book that was the collected plays of Shakespeare.

So that’s what I read, mostly.

About halfway through the year in sixth grade I started to get the hang of the new schedule and my grades improved. It wasn’t really the reading that helped, I just needed time, but I also got to read some great stories that I might not elsewise have read. And some historicals that… I don’t think I finished all those.