It's too late. But my roommate isn't here, and I don't feel like going to sleep. Thus, I am going to write a bunch of shit in here again. I look back on some of my old posts and realize that HOLY FUCKING SHIT THEY'RE FUCKING HUGE. But you'll listen, won't you?

Should I really care if you want to read all of the musings I write in here? I don't think so. Theodore Giesel p.k.a. "Dr. Seuss" once said, "say what you think, and do what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." If you give a fuck, you give a fuck. And if you don't give a fuck, you don't matter. And if you don't feel like reading this whole thing, I understand that it's a long investment of your time. So don't read all of it. If you do read all of it, I'll assume that A) You REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY like reading, or B) You're obsessing over me and that creeps me out. Stop, please.

There IS a girl I know who really really really likes reading. And she's amazing at it. She puts all of her kindergartener classmates to shame. I don't know if I should write her name on here, because there's a thing called confidentiality and I'm supposed to maintain it as required by my employers, whoever they are. A bunch of people who write a bunch of mandates on paper and give them to people who like killing trees. Whatever.

She used to be shy around me. She thought I was intimidating. Here comes the guy over six feet tall. No one's really sure why he comes here. But he takes the kids outside, one-by-one, like the admitting room into a doctor's office. Not just any doctor's office--the kind with needles. Maybe he uses a syringe to stab kids in the forehead and inject liquid knowledge.

The first time we read together, the first book we looked at wasn't a story. It was a series of words with a picture above it representing the word. Normally, what I'd do is ask the kids what some of the words were, and what letter it started with--we'd use it for letter sounds. THIS girl was reading every last word, breezing through with no mistakes. She went on to read some storybooks. Flawlessly. I was happy. Not only had I found someone whose skills were impressive-- I had found someone like me.

I read Charlotte's Web front-to-back when I was three years old. That's what my mom tells me, anyway. I guess I sort of remember it? The English language was like a puzzle to me--a puzzle I HAD to solve. I wouldn't rest until I got it right.

And now here's this girl. Way ahead of the rest of her class. I could tell she was bored. I had been in her position before. She had little opportunity to move ahead of her class, though she was very capable of doing so. She was bored, like a puppy in an enclosure in an animal shelter waiting for a home. I had to do something.

Some carry iPods with them wherever they go, but I always have a notebook with me. I love to write, and I love to give my neverending thought a place to manifest itself in the real world. I like to explore things that can be seen on paper, like geometry, maps, songs, poems, prose, and whatever randomness that can be written.

On the bus, where there are only strangers to potentially comfort me, I open my notebook and turn to a blank page. With a mechanical pencil in my hand, I sit there with my open notebook and I'm comfortable. I feel safe, safe from the danger of having ideas that spontaneously come to my head become lost forever because they were never written down. Sometimes I won't even write anything, but I'll just be sitting there, thinking. But I'm comfortable.

When I go to the elementary school, I bring a bus schedule and one of my notebooks. I noticed that the smart girl was having trouble with words with double vowels, like "ea" and "ou" and "oa." So I wrote down some words in my notebook and asked her to read them. If her class wasn't going to lead her to make progress, I certainly was going to try to.

As we read more and more, she began to like it more and more. She felt like she could finally be free to be herself, as opposed to trying to dumb herself down to someone she wasn't while she was in the classroom. I know what it's like to be confident about what you can do, and feeling like showing the world what you can do. I want all the kids I tutor to feel that, including her.

Now, she's all smiles around me. She waves, and we actually have somewhat of intelligent conversations. Yes, intelligent conversations, and she's only six (or almost six). I say this because she structures her sentences intelligently and carefully. And when she expresses friendship toward me, I feel that it's because I did something for her.

I'm just glad I could help someone and that I could do it well.