HI, THIS IS LORETTA. You know, I’ve never thought of myself as old.

As a matter of fact, sometimes I even get amazed when I tell people how old I am. It’s nice to feel young at heart.

Yesterday I went to an introductory class for event planning at San Francisco State University. I’ve got several events under my belt already and really enjoy that sort of thing. It was exciting being in a classroom setting again and when the instructor talked about actually getting a bachelor of arts degree in hospitality and management, I thought, “I want to do that!”

But my next thought was, “I’m too old to get a four-year degree.”

Whoa.

I remember when I was in high school, I couldn’t wait to get out and be on my own and experience life. I sailed through the last four years of school with close to an A average. I remember my science teacher rolling his eyes at me and pronouncing my name, “Lo-rett-taa,” every time he called on me to answer a question. I think he knew I was bored and he was trying to get my attention by making everyone laugh when he said my name.

This is John, and I do have a four-year degree.

I hold a bachelor of arts in political science. My minor was cultural anthropology — though I wavered back and forth between that and geography. I really liked both topics — in fact in college I just plain liked school.
But it wasn’t always that way.

School started out OK for me I guess. I began kindergarten in Santa Clara just after my family moved there from Georgia, and it was nice for a lonely kid in a new town to have a regular group of friends again.

My clearest early memories are from Miss Fox’s kindergarten class at show-and-tell time. I remember bringing a battery-operated space capsule (fashioned after the moon rocket) and showing the whole class how it worked — and being so proud.

After that I recall my first-grade class that was co-taught by Mrs. Cole and Mrs. Whorley. I sat behind a girl named Penny. I used to manifest the little crush I think I had for her by sticking crayons in my nose and tapping her on the shoulder. The idea was that she would turn around and see how much I liked her. Somehow she just didn’t get my drift.

I actually liked junior high school, what they now call middle school. Junior high was just seventh and eighth grades and it was down the long hall at the end of the high school.

I had an English teacher in seventh grade who changed my life. OK, so it’s hard for me to write this and tell anyone, but I had dyslexia when I was a kid. All through grade school I pretty much faked it when it came to reading. I remember at the beginning of seventh grade, our English teacher telling us that we would be reading and giving book reports on five books. I must have broken out in a sweat because after class she asked me to stay and talk to her privately.

Even as I write this I catch myself holding my breath, thinking how difficult it was to tell my teacher I couldn’t read.

But the coolest thing happened when I talked to her. She said she had dyslexia, too, and she could help me. She made a deal with me. She said I could read just one book the entire year, but I actually had to read it and talk to her about it.

The book was “Gone with the Wind.”

Second grade I don’t remember so well but third I do, because I was at a new school again having to make a whole new batch of friends. It helped a lot that the teacher, Mrs. Torres, seemed to “get” me. The thing I remember best about her class — and what felt best about it — was when she read us the book “Charlotte’s Web.” We’d gather on the floor in the corner of the classroom every day after lunch and she’d read to us in a way that, for me, made the story feel so real I felt like I was in it.

Fourth grade was entirely forgettable because the teacher, Mr. Pluff, was woefully miscast in his choice of profession. I could see old Pluff being a petty criminal, a mid-level manager, or maybe a used car salesman — but a fourth-grade teacher? Not so much.

Fifth and sixth went fairly well, I guess, and then came junior high. The seventh and eighth grades, junior high, were, for me, a brave new world. It’s where I learned about girls, and marijuana, and Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith. Oh, and I think some math and English, too.

It’s also where I first learned to cut school.

It was a challenge to read “Gone with the Wind”; it has close to a thousand pages. But I did it, and that teacher, and that book, started me on the path to being an avid reader. I love reading and I love books.

Just not enough to go to college after I graduated.

So here I am, contemplating going back to school after all these years. Back when I read “Gone with the Wind,” I thought I was too old to learn how to read. Everyone around me was reading three times as fast as I could, and it all made sense to them. And they learned how to do that when they were in grade school. I somehow felt I’d missed the opportunity to become an accomplished reader.

Thank goodness I was wrong. Maybe I’m wrong this time, too. Am I too old to go back and get a four-year degree? By the time I get it I will be close to 60 years old!

That’s old, right?

Once I learned how to cut class, cutting became my main course of study. Not right away, mind you — for the first year or two of high school I managed to stay fairly well engaged, in some classes anyway.

But by 11th grade I was definitely majoring in ditching. My minor was attending the occasional course that still held my attention. With the exception of two or three teachers, high school simply lost its appeal to me.

I didn’t care about it — at all.

It got to the point where I became sort of incensed that they wanted me to go see the same teachers, in the same classrooms, on the same campus, four years in a row. To me that was incomprehensible. Who does that? Well, apparently almost all the students whose names were not John Gavin.

But my name was.

I barely made it off that high school campus with a diploma. And really the only reason I did was because one of those two or three teachers I mentioned, a compassionate coach by the name of Duane Asplund, who got that I was in the wrong environment for me, let me run miles to earn the credits I needed for graduation.

And if there’s something I can do, it’s run.

Fast forward to college and you’d have seen a man who now liked school as much as he used to hate it. College was a place I wanted to be — “want to’”rather than “have to.” And that made all the difference. I put myself through school by working full time and never dropped below a 3.0 average.

College was where all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place for me. Not at age 18, though — I still wasn’t ready then. I went to college after I’d been out in the world a little while.

I know someone else who’s been out in the world a while, too — even longer than me. I was so taken with her that I married her, and now I hear her talking about a desire to get a college degree — but she has doubts. I’d tell her this, though: She hasn’t been out in the world as long as she thinks.

And I see her world one day including a four-year degree.

John P. Gavin is the author of “Online Dating Sucks … but it’s how I fell in love,” which is available at Bookshop Benicia. Loretta Gavin is a writer and mother of two — and the subject of John’s book.