Childhood Memories
As a child I was never very eloquent, nor bombastic. I didn’t read consistently, I would always read in random blocks of days. Sometimes I would spend sunny days just bundled up and reading away. I’d read simple books like Goosebumps and Harry Potter. Occasionally I’d throw in an adolescent book or an adult book and try and make sense of the complicated diction. Sometimes my teachers were impressed with the “amount” I read but little did they know my parents would sometimes have to beg me to read. I didn’t really fall in love with the idea of reading until one day when my father actually decided to read me a book from his childhood.
I can’t exactly recall the title of the book, but I remember it was a collection of Native America stories that had been passed down from generation to generation. I remember one story in particular that still gives me goose bumps to this day—the way my told it made me want to read more of these stories. (To sum up the story in a few phrases; four dogs of different strengths have to fend against a monster that is going to attack a tribe. They are given magical shoes that allow them to run for long periods of time. Though all of them fight valiantly the monster is too strong. However, they badly injure the monster and send it back to where it came from.) Something about that story still gives me the chills today. I think it’s because I know for a fact that it motivated me to want to read for the first time. Ever since then I’ve read that story a few times. I used to ask my babysitter to read it to me all the time, up to the point where he’d ask if we could read something else.
As I continued to read I realized that I was able to become more confident in my spelling skills and recognizing syntactical errors. It was pretty cool actually because I was gaining skills a lot of students wouldn’t gain until two or three years later. I was getting amazing grades on my spelling tests and acing every grammar quiz. I soon came to discover that reading would open a lot of new doors for me, along with giving me newfound knowledge.
Eventually, I began reading science articles and historical documentaries in magazines. I used to memorize all the facts and tidbits and then vomit them out to my parents or my brother. I used to get a lot of surprised expressions; many people did not expect a sixth grader to explain how black holes work or what nuclear physics was. Like I said, reading opened up A LOT of doors for me.
As I grew older, my leisure time decreased and my interest for reading increased to the point where I’d be reading up until midnight on school nights. I’d even read before cross country practices and during church just to find out what happened to a character or find out the cliff hanger. My parents disapproved and told me I should do something better like run outside or play catch with my brother. But I just wanted to read.
When I began gaining an interest in academics and sports I found that my time for reading was plummeting. I knew I had to make a commitment to one or the other so I decided to space my time out more evenly. To this day I continue to balance my time between school, reading, and academics. My only regret it that I didn’t begin reading earlier.
