Growing up a bookworm, most of the family's vacations saw me in one of two places when it came to buying a souvenir: The stuffed animals section, or the book section. The former comes from a still-present appreciation of cute things (though I don't want to pet anyone's animals because that means I have to go wash my hands). But it's the latter that, as I reflect on my hazy self-memories, I begin to see the stirrings of the bibliophile that I would one day grow into.
No one is born able to read, and I have memories of my own illiteracy. My mother was paying bills one day. I know this was before I went to school, so it was likely the late morning, early afternoon. Sunlight spilled over the kitchen table on which the sundry bills were spread. My father, a free-lancing guitarist since before I was born, would get the money from work (gigs, as they call them in the industry, doncha know) and my mom would crack open the checkbook, fill out the amounts, seal the envelopes, affix the stamp, and send them back. This sort of adulthood behavior is rather foreign to me, if only because my experience is to open my laptop, click a few buttons, and then go about my day. (If that. Like most millennials, I use auto-payment services all the time.)
It was foreign to me back then, too, if only because of that darn inability to read. I had just gotten a new toy in a box of Rice Krispies (if I'm remembering an afternoon thirty years ago correctly), one that was translucent yellow and molded into the shape of one of the Rice Krispies' mascots--let's pretend it was Snap. The effect of the rounded base on which Snap was settled drew my attention. In a small way, it acted like a magnifying glass, though everything was distorted and, of course, yellow.
When I discovered that this was the case, it was because I had crawled onto a kitchen chair and investigated one of my mom's filled out checks. I don't know what it was about this one check, necessarily, that fascinated me so much, but I really liked it. I kept putting Snap on it and looking at whatever it was that makes a five year old excited.
Mom noticed that I was playing with this one particular check and that I was getting squirmy. I had found a pen and was about to go to town on one of the checks. Mom stopped me from doing any vandalism, then shooed me away. That worked for about as long as that parenting technique ever works, and soon I was back. My mom gave out an exasperated cry, scribbling on one of the checks.
"What's wrong, Mommy?" I imagine myself asking.
"I filled out the check wrong. Here, Steven, if you want to draw on a check, draw on this one."
Excited, I went back to my spot with Snap and had a new check that I could be an adult with and write all over. Sadly for my mom's bill-paying attempts that day, I mistook the already ruined check for the one that fascinated me. In my childish brain--and being unable to read--I picked what I liked and began to scrawl all over the paper. I used Snap to look at my handiwork. I was content. A moment later, my mom shrieked. "Steven! What did you do?"
I tried to explain, only to have her point to the discarded, voided check that sat nearby, untouched. "That's the one you're supposed to use! You've ruined a perfectly good check!"
My response to the chastisement is lost to time, and even as I tell the story, I can see gaps in my memories (I moved into the house I'm picturing when I was five, almost five and a half. I learned how to read while in kindergarten, so it wasn't summer. Was I off that day? Was it a weekend?). But there is something in my mind--perhaps a memory of a real event, perhaps a fantasy I've turned real through the process of time--that points to a time when I couldn't read, and I remember not being able to.
A more sure memory was in kindergarten when, in the computer lab (which were monochromatic--orange and black--since this was 1988) I remember doing well on a reading activity on the computer. The phrase "Good Job!" flashed on the screen.
"G...g...God? Job?" I whispered under my breath.
My teacher came by. "Good job, Steven! Keep it up!"
A flash of guilt--maybe even the first I felt--for having sinned settled over me. I had accidentally said "God"; I had taken the Lord's name in vain. I didn't like the feeling of not knowing what a word meant, and I also felt awful for my wickedness.
The traumas of my childhood are tame but often relate to literacy.
Some of the reasons that I became such an avid reader came out of this desire to not make those mistakes again. Reading would have prevented me from ruining Mom's check. Reading would have prevented me from swearing. In the formative, facile conclusions of a very young brain trying to make sense of the world, I began to equate literacy with aversion of error.
This idea of the infallibility of a book has trailed me throughout my life. I'm aware of that fallacy now (the Current Events and Politics section of Barnes and Noble is a good way of disabusing one of the notion that books qua books are inherently perfect). And I think that it's one of the most immovable aspects of my unrealized dream of becoming a published author. It isn't that I've "wanted to be a writer since I was a kid," I think it's more egotistical than that. I think I may, in some strange, sublimated way, wired my brain into thinking that, if I could get my words into a book, they couldn't be wrong. That they were there because they had a validity, and I would gain a reflected validity, too. Hence writing becomes tied into reading as a dark, quiet part of my brain seeks an external reassurance.
Hmm. What a thing toread write about.
No one is born able to read, and I have memories of my own illiteracy. My mother was paying bills one day. I know this was before I went to school, so it was likely the late morning, early afternoon. Sunlight spilled over the kitchen table on which the sundry bills were spread. My father, a free-lancing guitarist since before I was born, would get the money from work (gigs, as they call them in the industry, doncha know) and my mom would crack open the checkbook, fill out the amounts, seal the envelopes, affix the stamp, and send them back. This sort of adulthood behavior is rather foreign to me, if only because my experience is to open my laptop, click a few buttons, and then go about my day. (If that. Like most millennials, I use auto-payment services all the time.)
It was foreign to me back then, too, if only because of that darn inability to read. I had just gotten a new toy in a box of Rice Krispies (if I'm remembering an afternoon thirty years ago correctly), one that was translucent yellow and molded into the shape of one of the Rice Krispies' mascots--let's pretend it was Snap. The effect of the rounded base on which Snap was settled drew my attention. In a small way, it acted like a magnifying glass, though everything was distorted and, of course, yellow.
When I discovered that this was the case, it was because I had crawled onto a kitchen chair and investigated one of my mom's filled out checks. I don't know what it was about this one check, necessarily, that fascinated me so much, but I really liked it. I kept putting Snap on it and looking at whatever it was that makes a five year old excited.
Mom noticed that I was playing with this one particular check and that I was getting squirmy. I had found a pen and was about to go to town on one of the checks. Mom stopped me from doing any vandalism, then shooed me away. That worked for about as long as that parenting technique ever works, and soon I was back. My mom gave out an exasperated cry, scribbling on one of the checks.
"What's wrong, Mommy?" I imagine myself asking.
"I filled out the check wrong. Here, Steven, if you want to draw on a check, draw on this one."
Excited, I went back to my spot with Snap and had a new check that I could be an adult with and write all over. Sadly for my mom's bill-paying attempts that day, I mistook the already ruined check for the one that fascinated me. In my childish brain--and being unable to read--I picked what I liked and began to scrawl all over the paper. I used Snap to look at my handiwork. I was content. A moment later, my mom shrieked. "Steven! What did you do?"
I tried to explain, only to have her point to the discarded, voided check that sat nearby, untouched. "That's the one you're supposed to use! You've ruined a perfectly good check!"
My response to the chastisement is lost to time, and even as I tell the story, I can see gaps in my memories (I moved into the house I'm picturing when I was five, almost five and a half. I learned how to read while in kindergarten, so it wasn't summer. Was I off that day? Was it a weekend?). But there is something in my mind--perhaps a memory of a real event, perhaps a fantasy I've turned real through the process of time--that points to a time when I couldn't read, and I remember not being able to.
A more sure memory was in kindergarten when, in the computer lab (which were monochromatic--orange and black--since this was 1988) I remember doing well on a reading activity on the computer. The phrase "Good Job!" flashed on the screen.
"G...g...God? Job?" I whispered under my breath.
My teacher came by. "Good job, Steven! Keep it up!"
A flash of guilt--maybe even the first I felt--for having sinned settled over me. I had accidentally said "God"; I had taken the Lord's name in vain. I didn't like the feeling of not knowing what a word meant, and I also felt awful for my wickedness.
The traumas of my childhood are tame but often relate to literacy.
Some of the reasons that I became such an avid reader came out of this desire to not make those mistakes again. Reading would have prevented me from ruining Mom's check. Reading would have prevented me from swearing. In the formative, facile conclusions of a very young brain trying to make sense of the world, I began to equate literacy with aversion of error.
This idea of the infallibility of a book has trailed me throughout my life. I'm aware of that fallacy now (the Current Events and Politics section of Barnes and Noble is a good way of disabusing one of the notion that books qua books are inherently perfect). And I think that it's one of the most immovable aspects of my unrealized dream of becoming a published author. It isn't that I've "wanted to be a writer since I was a kid," I think it's more egotistical than that. I think I may, in some strange, sublimated way, wired my brain into thinking that, if I could get my words into a book, they couldn't be wrong. That they were there because they had a validity, and I would gain a reflected validity, too. Hence writing becomes tied into reading as a dark, quiet part of my brain seeks an external reassurance.
Hmm. What a thing to