I’ve Always Been a Reader

I learned how to read on Sunday afternoons, when I’d sit on my father’s lap, and he’d read the comics to me. I’d listen to him read and look at the pictures, and after a while, I started seeing patterns in the print below the pictures. I think I knew how to read before I went to kindergarten, but I remember failing a coloring test in first or second grade. We were coloring balloons, and I colored them whatever color I wanted. I got them all wrong; turns out there were directions UNDER the balloons that told us what color to color each balloon. I’m still not good at reading directions — even on the computer, if I’d scroll down and look at the whole page, I would save a lot of cursing.

Every school had a library, and I never needed directions on how to find it and check out books. Even though I changed schools several times in eleven years (different story) I always found the new library and checked out stacks of books, read them all, and went back for more. I’d read up to seventy books a year; I kept a diary and wrote the names and authors of each book when I finished it.

In seventh grade, we started to be able to order paperback books for a very small amount per book (twenty-five cents each, maybe) and when the orders came in, it was thrilling. I started to have my own library, and I could read the books I liked over and over, with no due dates. I can still remember the excitement of the smell and feel of those brand new books. I couldn’t wait to get home and start reading.

I was never much into non-fiction; I read a few biographies, but real life seemed boring compared to the stories of characters who always had something exciting happening to them. Because we’d moved so much, and because my brother and sister were four and a half and five and a half years younger than I was (they still are — I’m just remembering when that age difference was a lot bigger than it is now) books were the friends and the stories were the playmates I didn’t have. Except on Saturday mornings, there weren’t a lot of kids’ shows on television back then, and there were only three stations to watch. Yes, and I walked to school uphill five miles each way in hip-deep snow, too. Kids never believe their parents and grandparents when they tell them how hard they had it compared to the way the kids have it today. I’m so old my KIDS didn’t have cellphones when they were in school. I’m ancient.

One horrible thing was I couldn’t read in the car on long car trips. I suffered from motion sickness; years later when I was in the navigator seat, looking at a map for a few minutes would make me sick. Yes, a map. It’s what my generation called a GPS. I still like to look at maps to see where I am, but I wouldn’t trade in my GPS for telling me how to get there. I couldn’t have moved down here, twelve hours from “home,” without my GPS. Words like “right” and “left” are hard enough for me. Throw in “east” or “west,” and I’m a disaster. I have no sense of direction at all, except maybe for “up” and “down,” but those are easy. At my age, “down” is very easy. “Up” not so much.

At some point, in my thirties, I think, I decided I was spending too much time reading and not enough time living. I started walking and going to the “Y” for exercise classes in the pool. I was teaching, and my kids were in school, and I always had essays to grade, so it wasn’t like I gave up reading — heck, after ten or twenty essays, picking up a good book was a treat. I got a dog, so I’d have someone to walk with (by then, my kids didn’t want to be seen in public with their MOTHER,) but my first dog wasn’t much of a walker. He sniffed each blade of grass and every bush and shrub, and it took us half an hour to get to the park two blocks away. When I got his sister from the next litter, she wasn’t much better — a walk once or twice a week was plenty for her. When I got Priscilla, a little Cairn/Westie mix, that changed. That little dog walked twelve pounds off me. We walked every day, rain or shine, snow, ice, broiling hot — it didn’t matter to her. I still curled up with a good book, just a lot less often.

But times change and people get old and dogs die. I still have three dogs, but I don’t walk them anymore. They have a huge yard, and I have sciatica. I still went out — there was always something going on that I could go to by myself if I had to — the State Fair, the Renaissance Faire, the Scottish Games, I still went to exercise in the pool — until the pandemic. Since the middle of March (it’s now November) there’s been no place to go, and I’m back with my books. I still read for pleasure and escape, and I still love to read. But I am looking forward to the time I can live again instead of just reading about other people’s lives. There’s nothing like a good book, unless it’s a good life of my own.