A late blooming reader

I was writing years before I became a reader, which, if you think about it, seems backward. I remember once, when I was about in the 4th grade, finding an old typewriter in our basement. I decided to start a neighborhood paper, which was odd, considering the only thing I had ever read in our newspaper was the comics.

In 6th grade I wrote the script for our class play, a macabre love story, somewhat plagiarized from the Adam’s Family. I did watch TV.

In Junior high, instead of reading a book for one of my book reports, I wrote a report on an imaginary book. As I recall, I received a good grade. Those were days before a teacher could easily check online, to see it that particular book even existed.

It wasn’t until the final semester of my junior high that I discovered books. It was Valley of the Dolls, and from that moment on I became a prolific reader.

In the last couple of years, I haven’t had the time to read many books, my reading these days seems confined to the Internet. But, when I think of a vacation, a real vacation (something we haven’t enjoyed for quite a while), the vision of me with a book in my hand comes to mind.