“Not again! Let me sleep a little more… Why do you want me to say this every day, over and over again? Nothing has changed. I don’t want to go to school today, either. And why does it always have to be your way?
Not another day with books, notebooks, lessons, problems, pencils, pencil cases, bells and reading!” said Jason to his mother. It was yet another morning call. Every school day started like that for Jason or God forbid the planet would go wrong.
For Jason school was his worst nightmare ever.
There were times you would think he could get a rush all over his face only with the sound of the word “school”.
As much as he liked chocolate, candy, ice-cream and french fries, at the same degree he disliked school.
He would rather not see his favourite friends for a whole year than go to school for a day. And if his attendance was not compulsory, he would not set foot in there.
He would rather play games on his computer, watch TV, listen to music, draw pictures and paint clay models of his favourite heroes.
Being in such a bad mood and unable to avoid going to school with his usual excuses, he got up, had breakfast and…
… picked up his backpack, in really slow motion like taking screen shots of a movie. Of course, he didn’t know and he didn’t care if he had all that he needed for his classes.
He stayed in class counting the hours patiently, until the sound of the last bell rang. That would make him jump from his desk and be the first to run out the door and back home.
The seconds, the minutes and the hours felt like ages in Jason’s mind. There were different teachers but they all sounded exactly the same in his mind; tedious and boring. Despite the diversity of the subjects, nothing seemed to trigger the interest of our young pupil.
Not even the intermissions had any meaning, since they would also come to an end.
It was only until the last hour and while waiting for the last “bell” of the day to ring- the one that would liberate him from school- when the words of the teacher magnetised his senses: “For your next assignment, let go of your imagination and create something for a book. Remember that imagination has no limits and you can design anything you like.” That was the first time that a school project excited Jason so much that he could not wait to go home and start his own, unique craft.
The project was exciting, but his limited relationship with books and reading did not help him a lot in providing him with ideas on what to create.
So he understood that he had to ask for help in order to complete the task. And it did not take him long to find that person, who loved books and reading; his mother!
He run home, opened the door with excitement and shouted “Mum, mum do you have any ideas about a book project?”.
That was the first time his mother saw her son so excited coming back from school and asking for her help on a school project. All previous homework was done after discussions and negotiations that ended in some sort of an agreements Like the most recent one: seven math exercises for an additional half an hour of TV. These kind of agreements were strange, but they were the only way to get Jason to do his homework.
“So let’s see what kind of thing you could make regarding a book…” said Jason’s mother as she was trying to get Jason’s imagination to work. “I think it has to be something with vivid and bright colours, closely related to the book and to be useful, so as to be used over and over again. It shouldn’t be something that you only made for your class and then threw in a drawer and forgot. The clock for example, is useful because it shows us with its index the time of the day and helps us organise our workload effectively”.
Jason felt suddenly like he was very close to what he was looking for. The word “index” sounded strange in his ears. Like a lighthouse shined its light to the solution of his enigma. ”That’s it. Like the index shows the time, I will make a bookmark to show me the page I stop reading, every time,” he shouted with joy, the young student.
Without wasting any more time, he went to his room and started gathering the materials he would use to make his own unique bookmark. Shortly, on top of his desk there were coloured papers of different sizes, colouring pencils, markers, rulers, scissors, and other things that would probably be useful to draw simple geometrical shapes with.
After making a couple of rough sketches and letting his imagination free to travel to a land of colours and shapes, he finally concluded to the look of his bookmark. He measured, he cut, he glued and he made everything with total commitment and attention. It was giving him so much satisfaction and joy that he put all his strength into making something so unique, so original and special such as his own creation.
Without wasting any more time, he took the first bookmark he made out of recycled paper, he opened a school textbook and he put it in the page where he was supposed to stop reading.
He prepared his backpack for school for the next day and he put inside the bag with all the other bookmarks he had made. This was the first time in a very long time that Jason prepared his backpack for school without any help from his mother.
Next morning he almost got to school before anybody else, eager to share the bookmarks he had made with so much joy for his classmates and his teacher. Everybody was very excited for the useful gifts that he had made for them and they thanked him with warm hugs and big, beautiful, bright smiles. Jason felt such satisfaction and joy that he started to get interested in school and all the beautiful things which he discovered in books, along with his bookmark. He went home anxious to finish his homework and prepare his backpack for the next school day so he could continue his book reading.
It was then that Jason realised, he had a magic bookmark which travelled without stopping through the books. And he decided to follow it in every new journey, every new book that he would find in his room.
It was another mystery, of course, where all those books kept coming from. If you know the answer, don’t read anymore. But if you have any doubts, then: Jason’s mother watched him as his interest in books grew, so she kept buying him new ones. As soon as he would come close to finishing a book, she would place the bookmark on the first pages of the next one, which she would then hide under the previous book.
