When I was a kid I loved to read! I loved books. There was one summer in particular that I remember pretty much spending the whole summer reading. This probably coincided with my decision to try to read every single book in my local library!
My school always participated in the Book-It Program. I always had one of the highest goals for number of books to read per month and I don't remember ever missing my goal. Which of course meant lots of free pizzas for me! It was like a bonus for all the reading I would have done anyway! I just loved going to Pizza Hut with my family & ordering my own personal pizza with my book-it certificate. It was most rewarding when the manager would bring the little glow-in-the-dark star for me with the check so that I could place it on my Book-It pin with precision!
One of my favorite school days was the one each month when everyone from my K-8 rural school would car pool to town to go to the library to pick out new books for the month. I remember one particular time when my teacher talked to my parents because he was concerned about the books I was choosing. I was really into the Sweet Valley High books at the time (this was in 6th grade) and one of the covers was a picture of Elizabeth & Jessica Wakefield in bathing suits and so he deemed that book inappropriate and talked to my parents about it. I was sooo mad! I'd been reading those books for a long time before that incident but he didn't get worked up until the bathing suit one!
Another time I remember having a assignment in school (I think it was actually for an outside contest of some sort) where we were asked to invent something. We were to brainstorm and try to think of something useful that we didn't think existed and then draw a picture of it. I had two ideas...the one I believe I submitted was a rig that attached to a bicycle that you could put your book on so that a person could read while they rode! It certainly makes me laugh thinking of that now and how dangerous that would really be but at the time I didn't think anything of it.
In fact, another of my memories from a few years later (when I was in high school) is of walking from school down to the public library where my mom worked and checking out a book & then reading it as I walked all the way through town to my grandparent's house. (I read the first chapter of 'The Firm' this way!) That's a little less dangerous than read & riding but it still couldn't have been too safe. (For those of you who are wondering...my second idea for an invention, which I didn't use because I was told it already existed, was a tray you place across the tub that would provide a way to read while taking a bath.)
The one thing that I think most of my memories have in common is that my love of reading blinded me to reality, practicality & feasibility! But I gotta say I find that rather enduring about my younger self! No wonder I had a problem with daydreaming! Sometimes I wish I could get a little bit of that innocence & wonder back. I hope that my kids have a love for reading that makes them lose sight of reality once in a while!
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