Gratitude Monday: Reading rainbow

A while ago I had a conversation with someone who mentioned that he came from a background where books did not figure in any major way. We were on IM, which is probably a good thing because when I read that, my eyes bugged out, I gasped and blurted out loud, “No books? How the hell do you escape without books?”

By escape, of course, I’m referring to reality. I have no idea how I’d have got out of childhood and youth alive, much less in any kind of reasonable working order, if I’d not had books of all sorts to climb into and close behind me.

As I look back on it, one of the few things my parents did right by natural inclination was to create an environment where reading was encouraged. Their personal reading was limited (mysteries for Mom, sci fi and westerns for Dad), but they didn’t restrict what we chose. If they saw you with your nose in a book, they didn’t look any closer to see what it might be; that was ipso facto okay.

I know Mom used to read to my older sister, because I’ve heard the stories about how many copies of The Tale of Peter Rabbit got worn out. And I recall flopping on her bed while she read The Poky Little Puppy and Little Bear to my younger sister. I have no memory of her reading to me, but she must have done.

Thing is, as soon as I got the literacy wherewithal I was just off to the races on my own. You know how they start you out pointing at each word and saying it aloud? About halfway through first grade I figured out that if you bagged the hand assist and just read the word in your head, you could move a lot faster. Once I mastered that I didn’t want any intermediary between me and the writer.

(Oh, but I was absolutely crushed by the Babar books. The first one was written in printed typeface, which I could read. But subsequent volumes were in cursive, and they don’t teach you to read that stuff until the third grade. I had to wait at least a year to read them! I was so pissed off by that; you’ve no idea.)

I basically read everything I could get my hands on. Fiction, non-fiction, Time magazine, Popular Mechanics, cereal boxes. The ‘Rents actually didn’t have a lot of books around the house, so the Pasadena Public Library was pretty much my crack dealer.

(And what they had was kind of strange. I recall some folio-sized rendition of “Tam o’ Shanter” with the creepiest illustrations ever. Scared the daylights out of me and I’ve never been much of a fan of Burns ever since. I have no idea what it was doing there because my parents certainly were not fans of poetry; someone must have given it to them, for some unfathomable reason.)

I used to ride my bike to the local branch and check out the maximum number of books allowed (six back then) and chow down on them like ruffled potato chips. It didn’t much matter what the book was about, as long as it took me somewhere I could invest my imagination in. In the intervals between trips to the library when I ran out of reading, I’d pull out a volume of the encyclopedia to tide me over. Because there’s always something interesting to find out there.

(Yes, I read encyclopedias. You got a problem with that?)

The libraries always had a summer reading program. The year between fifth and sixth grade my family was quarantined because my sister got scarlet fever. Since I’d already had it I went to stay with my great-grandmother, who lived about a mile away from another library. Every day I was with her I’d walk up to the Catalina branch, check out six books, walk back and read them late into the night (my great grandmother wasn’t as fussed about lights-out curfews as my mother). Next day, same thing again.

Wasn’t like I was reading Proust or Petrarch; but it made a difference to me. (In September, when a librarian came round to school to hand out the little summer reading club certificates, she pulled out the one from Allendale and then the one from Catalina for me. She gave me a dirty look, like I’d somehow been gaming the system, but I didn’t care.)

I spent hours and hours transporting myself into anywhere, anytime or anything that wasn’t Pasadena. The first one I recall was getting the hell out of Dodge on the Hispaniola with Jim Hawkins, Billy Bones and the whole Treasure Island posse. And by “on the Hispaniola” I mean I just edited Stevenson’s story as I went along to include me scurrying about with the salt air stinging my eyes and the worn planks of the decks warming my bare feet.

(Of course, this was before I discovered that I’m not what is known as a good sailor. I was queasy on a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, and I spend most of my time under sail hanging over the (aft) rail, losing all my recent meals. So the truth is those pirates would have heaved my puking ass over the side of the boat before I got to shiver me first timber.)

But that’s reality, and the whole point of reading is escape. In books I could go to sea without worrying about Scopolamine patches or sun block—or about whatever’s happening in my own house. I could go on archaeological digs in Central America (no concerns about snakes, mosquitos or tetanus; just uncover those Mayan artifacts); work on the space program (I’ll pick up that physics stuff later; right now we have a moonshot to launch); dance at the ball where Natasha charmed Andrei; await final orders on Bataan. Even the notion of living in Iowa or Minnesota was attractive.

Eventually high school brought some discipline to my reading; college continued that process. My vocabulary and frame of reference expanded. I sought out different, even opposing ideas; thought about how other people processed their reality; sometimes tested the theses to see how they’d work for me. I demanded rigor in thought and clarity in expression.

Thing is, I’d forgot all about what those books meant to me—the difference between raw, freezing bewilderment and something filtered through larger experience, which can therefore be dealt with. Really, the difference between crushing and bearable.

Kids have multiple escape routes these days—video games, 700 cable TV channels, Internet porn; and it’s good that they have choices. Mine were limited, and I’m pretty sure that if I’d not had the buffer of all those books, if I’d emerged at all I’d have been a sociopath. 

I still knock back more than 100 books a year on average; because any time I can learn something, understand something in a new way or see how something affects others, I'm a little bit more secure.

So today I’m grateful for the thousands and thousands of books that have come into my life. And that Mom and Dad encouraged me to get out of their hair and go read.