As long as I can remember, there were books in my life. I
can still remember going to the library as a child to pick out new books,
filling the gigantic denim bag to bursting with new things to read, and even
maxing out the library card a few times. I’m proud to admit that we hit the
limit for borrowing at least five times, but the librarians knew us well, so
they would override the system setting, and allow us to take the thirty pounds
of children’s books each week.
When I was little, we had a read-before-bedtime routine,
and my brother and I would curl up next to my mother on her bed and she would
read to us. As soon as I knew what begging was, I would beg her to read us
more. When we had the children’s books that were only thirty pages, I would ask
for another whole book, but when the books got a bit bigger, I would try each
night to coerce her into reading me “just one more chapter, pretty please, Mom?”,
and while it rarely worked, it must have on occasion because I kept doing it.
When I started pre-school at age three, I loved it. I
loved being able to go twice a week to a place where magic happened. In the
next year of pre-school, we started to write the letters. I can still see the
tortured squiggles of a child dragging a pencil across paper, trying
desperately (and likely failing) to trace the overly rounded and perfectly
straight letters. It was when I got to Kindergarten that I discovered that I
had the magic too. After learning how to read, I whizzed through the primers.
Since I had, in fact, taken to it so easily, my mom made me read them
backwards, since we had each primer for a week. Those books, which were
downright boring after the first five reads, were a bit funny whilst being read
backwards. In first grade, my love of reading continued to grow, and for a
little while, I was satisfied for a little while with Junie B Jones, and Bailey
School Kids, but when I was eight, I needed more. I started reading the Royal Diaries books, and I still have
the copy of Angel in Charge that I
got when I was young. In fact, I was told I could no longer read Angel for the Accelerated Reader quizzes
because I had taken that quiz too many times.
Second grade was also the year that I experimented with
putting books on hold. I loved the Royal
Diaries so much that I tried to request one that my school didn’t have, but
in a moment of uncertainty, I said Princess
Diaries, the books by Meg Cabot, instead of the historical fiction books
that play at being the diary of a princess from long ago. I got the book some
short time later, and since part of my homework was to read aloud to a parent,
I read part of this pink new book to my mom. Twelve years later, I can still
remember her reaction. I’m sitting near
her, reading about Mia Thermopolis’s tutor, and I read something along the
lines of “a good tutor doesn’t stick his tongue down your mother’s throat” and
my mom yelled at me to stop. As an eight-year-old, I was confused. “Did I do
something wrong?” I thought to myself. Eight-year-old-me didn’t understand that
tonsil hockey isn’t something for little kids to know about (and to be honest I
still can’t see the appeal of it). The next day, I was sent to school with
orders to return the book, and a note saying I wasn’t permitted to get those
books again.
Fourth grade rolls around, and I find I can’t read quite
like I used to, as there are shadows all around the words. It almost looks like
someone didn’t let the ink dry before closing the book. After an eye exam, I
found that it was an “accommodative spasm” caused by a weakness in the muscles
that focus my eyes. Reading in dim light had forever hurt my eyes by age ten. I
was a child with reading glasses. Over time, I was using a stronger and
stronger lens, until I could swap glasses with my mom, who is thirty-five years
older than me. To make a very long story somewhat shorter, I did exercises on
the computer with 3D glasses to strengthen that muscle, and I’m now back to a
+0.5 lens strength, with continued 20/20 vision.
Since that first ophthalmologist visit, I have been
careful to either have a proper amount of light, or to be using something that
had a light of its own. Despite the shadows and focus problem that I still
have, I continue to read voraciously, even in other languages. A friend of mine
got me a children’s copy of Cinderella in Spanish, called El sueño de Cenicienta. I own The
Little Prince in French, English, and Latin. I have countless random books
in other languages, including The Old Man
and the Sea in German.
As a freshman in high school, I discovered that I’m a
decent poet, and a poem of mine was published in the school’s literary
magazine. Writing is a great escape, whether it’s channeling pent-up emotions
onto paper in the form of a new poem, or writing a fanfiction of Harry Potter that is told from the
viewpoint of a friend, who replaces a character already in it. The best thing
about fanfiction is that one already has a certain series of events to follow,
but there is still a lot of freedom to change whatever I wish.
For me, reading has always been, and will continue to be,
a great source of pleasure. Books are truly magic. Recently I was reading a
book, and looked up for some reason, surprised to see that I hadn’t moved.
While reading, I had been not only reading the words, but seeing the story come
to life before my eyes, and whether it was real or not, it was still fantastic.
My love of reading spawned a love of languages at an early
age, and now at university, I feel I’ve found my “schtick” as it were, by doing
language related things all day long. No longer am I told only to use English,
but I’m encouraged to do as much with other languages as possible. Always being
in search of a new book, a new language, or new friends, reading gives me all
of those. Even if my fictitious friends leave when I close the book, they stay
in my heart forever.
