When I think back on my childhood, I remember a yellow record player, a Snoopy Sno-Cone machine, Lite Brite, an E-Z Bake Oven, and sitting in front of the tv set watching hours of Another World, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Seseme Street, That Girl! and the Monkees.
Books didn't make an appearance until I was about six years old. I think my first book might have been the Velveteen Rabbit. Followed closely by The Little Prince. And then Charlotte's Web.
My parents are not readers. My brothers would rather toss a ball around outside or spend hours advancing to the next level of a video game. My grandparents worked too hard to read anything more substantial than a newspaper.
I have a vague suspicion my godmother gave me my first fix. I know she was with me when I applied for my first library card. She was my enabler.
I read All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury in my fourth grade reading class. Even now, I remember the constant rain of Venus. Once every seven years, the cloud cover disappeared for an hour to reveal a lemon yellow sun. The main character, Margot, was a misfit whose family was rumoured to be moving back to Earth. To spite her, the kids locked Margot in a closet right before they ran outside to play. For an hour they basked in the sunshine. When the first raindrops plopped from the sky, they remembered the girl in the closet and felt great remorse when they let her out.
It was the first time a story whipped my mind into a frenzy. Imagine daily life on another planet! I also felt like I understood Margot and how awkward she felt around her classmates. But then again, I could relate to that cruel impulse to lock the weak know-it-all in the closet and deny her the opportunity to see the sun... a demented way of evening out the playing field.
I was hooked.
That summer I went to a garage sale with my parents. Tables covered with an old woman's castoffs lined a long driveway. With some kind of weird internal radar, I detected a pile of cardboard boxes in a corner by the garage. I'd found my treasure. I begged and pleaded and became the proud owner of the entire collection of Nancy Drew mysteries (in hard cover) and the 20-volume series of Jacques Cousteau's Ocean Adventures.
I devoured those books and became a cliche.
I read in the car during long weekend roadtrips. I read by flashlight when I was supposed to be fast asleep. I read before, during and after supper. I read at every opportunity I could find.
My parents didn't understood how a story could seduce their daughter. What was the attraction of all those words? How was it possible to get lost in a book?
Books became my obsession. My parents were reluctant to encourage my habit. I learned to be clever and super sweet, to turn an outing to the mall into a book-buying expedition or to convince my grandfather into taking a detour by the local library. As a last resort I'd beg and plead and whine -- though I saved that technique for the exceptional find that I could not live without.
On the one hand, I was fortunate my parents didn't pay close attention to what I read. By the 6th grade, while I consumed SE Hinton and young adult romances from the Sweet Dreams series and Sweet Valley High, I also feasted on Stephen King and Kurt Vonnegut.
In high school, my class schedule included honors English, humanities and drama. My days and nights were filled with Shakespeare, Plato, Fitzgerald, Austen, Tolkein, Dickens, Steinbeck, Poe, Bronte, Twain, Hugo, Woolf, and the occassional novel by Anne Rice or Michael Crichton or Jean Auel.
Stories captured my imagination and refused to let go --- The Great Gatsby, Animal Farm, The Pearl, The Lottery, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Time Machine, Canterbury Tales.
I love to escape in a book... letting go of life's frustrations until they buzz in the background like white noise. Who would I be today had I not discovered this ability to visit other worlds? The delight and shock of being exposed to new ideas?
I'm a bookworm. I'm also the only person in my family to wear glasses. My mom believes there exists a corollary cause and effect relationship.
They still don't understand what I see in books. But they finally accept that I'd prefer to spend $300 on fiction than on shoes.
Do you remember your first book? The first story that made a lasting impression? What are you reading now?
