My Reading Life

When I was a little boy, growing up in Indiana, there was nothing I liked better than to read. From the time I was 5 years old, maybe younger, I was always in possession of a book. I'd carry them around with me everywhere. Sometimes they'd be those little hard cardboard books or big over sized picture books that were half as big as I was. I found out very early that by reading books I could be anywhere and become anyone I wanted to be.

As I grew older, I started school and also got my first library card. From the day that I had my very own library card, the library was my second home. I eagerly prowled the small library and read my way through the young children's section then moved on to the bigger kids section simply because I had run out of things to hold my interest. If I came across a book that seemed very challenging for me, I treated it like a puzzle and would focus and read it all the way through even if I sometimes had to look up unfamiliar words in the family dictionary so that I could understand it. I especially loved mysteries and biographies

Reading never seemed like a chore for me, as it seemed to be for some of the other kids in my class. I think that it helped that my family didn't approve of television when I was growing up. We neither had a television in our home nor were we allowed to watch very much television if we were visiting other people. This restriction was due to a very strict Christian church of which my mother was a part. I resented this at times but now that I'm older I appreciate the deep love of books that was allowed to take hold in me precisely because of the absence of television in our home.

Instead of watching TV in the evenings, like I knew most of my schoolmates did with their families, my mom, my sister and I would all grab whatever books we were reading and settle into our favorite chair or couch in the living room to read for a few hours each night. From time to time one of us would laugh or start to cry and we'd all stop and listen to each other share the passage that had touched us or that would make all of us laugh. One rule that my mother did have to impose was "No reading at the dinner table." During these years we weren't rich in material things but we certainly never felt poor and I think that reading and sharing together had a lot to do with that.

I didn't know until I was much older just how rare and wonderful our family experience was. During these years I would read anything and everything, from cereal boxes to the set of Encyclopedia Britannica that my mother had bought for us. My sister and I would read for hours and never get bored.

It is not surprising that I was seen as something of a nerd in school. This was in the late 80's, long before being a nerd was a cool thing to be.
So, as I got older and started to feel the pressures of adolescence, I rebelled against anything and everything for a few years, as teenagers often do. I found myself reading less and sneaking out more to go to parties. I found new, seemingly more invigorating ways to gain acceptance and find adventure during this time. Nonetheless, I graduated from high school with honors and went off to college.

For the first two years I applied myself and truly enjoyed the college experience. The parade of new ideas along with the sheer volume of required reading brought me a sense of home and belonging and stimulated me. It was at this point that I believed I would one day become a professor. Alas, this was not to be the case.

During my sophomore year in college, and after much worry and soul searching, I "came out" to my family and friends as a gay man. It went fairly well and I embarked on a wild and hedonistic few years as I went through what I have come to call my "second adolescence". I still read during this period, but not nearly as much as I used to. I ended up dropping out of college and taking a job managing an Italian restaurant for almost a decade. It took me many years, a move to a different state and conquering some addictions that came up along the way, before I returned to my first love of reading with any real regularity.