Literature Storm - How I Became an Avid Reader

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.