I can’t recall the age exactly, whether it was kindergarten or 1st grade, but it had been the period in school where we began to learn how to read.

Here’s the thing: I was an energized, curious kid. Especially at school, if I wasn’t interested in the subject being taught, then you did not have my attention AT ALL. This didn’t come out of a devious nature. I was just only interested in the things that “I” was interested in.

Needless to say, this created some difficulty for my teachers when I was younger. So around that time in school when we had to learn to read, I had a hard time learning. It wasn’t dyslexia, but not being able to sit down and concentrate the way the school wanted me to. So, since my parents didn’t want me falling behind in reading for school, they signed me up for a summer reading course.

A summer reading course? Every kid’s dream, right? Well, this one turned out to be a bit different.

You see, it turned out that this summer course came highly recommended. Why, you ask? Well as it turns out, the teacher of this course had a very creative approach in her teaching. From the bits I can remember, she was all about thinking outside the box in helping us learn to read.

And there was one assignment in particular that would impact me the most.

At some point in the course, possibly early on, she gave us kids and parents an assignment for home. You see, in the 90’s, whenever a big movie would come out, as long as it wasn’t rated R, there would often times be a kids storybook version of the movie to come out during it’s release as well. It essentially was the whole movie summed up in a small amount of pages, with photo’s from the movie and a little text on each page describing that point in the film. So, our teacher wanted us kids to read these books to our parents. But instead of reading the text on each page, she wanted us to make up the story ourselves using the pictures throughout.

Now in my young mind, this was an oddity. Sure, I loved movies and playing with toys and all of that, but the idea that I could make up my own stories never crossed my mind. I never even thought that was possible or that I even had the authority to create stories. But, we went home that night and I had to do this assignment. My book of choice was the storybook for one of the Joel Schumacher’s Batman films(HIGH QUALITY CINEMA). So that night, I sat down with my Dad and I opened up the book. What happened in those next minutes was MAGICAL. To my surprise, I was doing it! Page by page, I would look at each photo, thinking back to what I had built up before, and crafted whatever part of the story came to mind. I was making myself laugh, think and most importantly create.

When my Dad and I got to the end of the book, I immediately told him to go get Mom because I wanted to go again and make up a new story! It was exhilarating. What happened that night was life changing. Just like my first trip to the movie theater made me fall in love with cinema, this night made me realize that God had given me the ability and right to create and tell my own stories. I was literally making up a story, purely based off images on the page(motion pictures). I was also making it up as I went, having no idea what would come next, which would also lead to my love of improv. And of course, this would all lead to my love of writing.

Needless to say, by the end of that summer reading course, I had actually began to learn how to read and I’d stay on pace with the other kids in school. More importantly, God had used this class and that night to unlock the storyteller in me. I know had the knowledge and freedom to create and tell stories of my own and it was absolutely liberating. When I look at all the ways I’ve grown and evolved and changed in my artistry, what’s funny is that my approach to writing and storytelling hasn’t really changed.

I’m still just that kid, sitting with the storybook, making it up as I go, delighting myself and hoping to delight others.