Being an only child often barren of excessive parental
authority besides my grandparents (whom fortunately raised me old school – no time
outs, just knock outs), it’s fair to assume I’ve been a loner since birth. I
was the only child born that entire day in our small town’s hospital. It’s like
the world knew doom was impending and gave me a grand entrance.
My immediate family
is still the only family I know, aside from the extended family made of close
friends, which I can count on half a finger. I’ve never needed to be part of
the crowd, never wanted to be noticed, if only for any of my plethora of skills
that fortuned me into a comfortable living. I’ve been on adventures and I’ve
had slow days; I’ve been a thrill and a burden, but my curiosity for knowledge
and newness is always peaking – I’m never satisfied with just knowing part of
something. I want to know how everything works, and the more I learn about
engineering and relativity, it’s true – everything is connected, everything on
Earth revolves around each other and evolves because of one force’s greater
imposition on another, very much how humans are destroying the planet, yet they
don’t realize that the planet is doing everything it can to fight back,
particularly with global warming in full effect: rising sea levels leading to a
higher percentage in volcanic eruptions– they are correlated. Mankind is on its
way to becoming the species to reach extinction the fastest ever on this
planet.
I wondered how they were correlated as well, so I read about
it. I love reading, have since I was a child, maybe by the age of six I was
reading anything I could get my hands on,
magazines, kids’ books, comic strips especially, but I’d also read the
rest of the newspaper. Being that young, my comprehension skills were fully
tested, but with a trusty dictionary and handy thesaurus I usually got the gist
of the content, quickly finding out that a prostitute and a politician share
similar business trades and tactics.
Garfield books were my crack and meth rolled into one. I
would read them cover to cover ten times over and laugh equally voraciously at
the same parts every time. By the fifth grade I was reading Stephen King and
Robert Louis Stevenson while solving mysteries with Encyclopedia Brown, which
eventually led to my adoration of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. I’d
be foolish begin counting how much literature I’ve taken down, but I’d also be
a fool to not remember who began my love for the written word – my grandfather.
It was day away from school, could have been a weekend or
summer vacation; I must have been four years old. I was always quiet, never
wanting to bother my grandparents. They were retired; my grandmother had
suffered a mental illness early in my life that robbed her of her brilliant,
mathematically gifted mind. My grandfather served in the Navy, fought at Pearl
Harbor and retired on disability from the welding industry. I wanted them to
enjoy their peace and quiet, but I was a curious bastard. When I wasn’t playing
with toys or climbing trees or leaping from the trees on to the roof
of the house and vice versa, I would
borrow my grandfather’s tools from his shed in the backyard which would be his
man cave by today’s terms; usually screwdrivers, saws, hammers, and nails – I
would sit in the dining room and begin deconstructing and dissecting anything with
screws and nails fusing them together – the VCR, the an old chair, the toaster
– I was Dr. Death prepped for surgery. I wanted to know how these things
worked. My grandparents loved it, but it drove my mother and my aunts insane.
It must’ve been the electrical shocks resulting from post-surgery malfunctions.
I never said I was a good doctor –or a certified one.
Finally, I was banned from using tools inside the house;
only when assisting my grandfather on house projects was I privileged with
swinging a hammer or sawing lumber. My grandfather caught me walking out of my
bedroom. He was reading the newspaper in the living room – my grandfather had
stacks of National Geographic magazines in his and grandma’s bedroom. He was
always reading; in his bedroom, the living room, outside on the porch, he
always had a magazine or a newspaper with him. So, he pulled me aside and said “Hey,
kid. You ever read these?” He showed me the cartoons Time magazine would
publish near the back of their magazines. I laughed at the ones whose jokes I
understood. I tried figuring out the ones I didn’t. My grandfather told me he
had more and that he’d let me read them. He opened the floodgates.
We had a TV, and by 1987 we finally decided to get cable,
and while I have enjoyed thousands of TV programs over the years, television
has always been my last choice of entertainment, unless I was watching Reading Rainbow. Even today I’ll be reading
while the TV is on bi-focusing and sometimes interchanging my full attention. The
last time my television burned out it was nearly six months before I bought a
new one. I didn’t miss TV. I missed sports, and I didn’t like going out to
watch them at sports bars or gimmick restaurants. I’m not socially inclined,
but I can hold a crowd if need be. Believe me, though, I much prefer being a
homebody who takes a stroll outside now and again. I enjoy my life that way.
Now, the internet has provided endless sources of
enlightenment. I could spend all day reading and researching different articles,
even downloading books. I tend to finish books faster on a laptop or a kindle
than on paper, but I love flipping a fully read page. I think the only thing I
never read were Playboy magazines. I
just looked at the pictures.
