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2003-01-30 - 10:31 p.m.

"She has her nose in a book again!"

That was the one consistent thing my parents, teachers and peers always said about me when I was a kid, and usually not approvingly. I lived for those magical hours when I could lose myself in a story, often to the detriment of my few familial, academic and social responsibilities. From the time I learned to read, I read constantly and uncritically.

I only vaguely remember being pre-literate, remember my fascination with the words in the storybooks my Mother read to me, in the mystery of letters and those cryptic marks on paper. I did not, as many smart people claim to do, teach myself to read at some phenomenally early age. But I was so ready to learn that almost the minute I broke the code I was reading beyond my years. I barely recall cruising through the beginner books in the first grade (Dick and Jane), that year being the only one in which I did not eagerly read through all the text books in the early weeks of the school term, and then writhe in boredom while the class stumbled through them with painful slowness. I am amazed that nobody noticed this and thought I might be extra smart. But no, elementary teachers are attuned to judging children by a certain set of standards: Is she paying attention? Is she following directions? Is her work turned in neatly and on time? In my case, the answer to these questions was often "no", and reading ahead was against the rules, so I was given average marks as a student and disapproving commentary on my report card: "She's not working up to her potential."

Many years later, in my graduate educational psychology class I learned that gifted children are often underachievers, because they master the aspects of material that interest them instantly, and then cannot sustain the attention to plodding through all the details. But apparently nobody knew that back then. They knew I had a big problem with math, so that proved I wasn't too smart....

My great math phobia began in the first grade and lasted over twenty years. I have a vivid memory of my first math panic. It was during a test, and the classroom was quiet except for the scratching of stubby pencils on tablet paper, the ticking of the big institutional clock over the blackboard. All around me the other kids were working away, heads bent over the stained wooden desks. I didn't know what to do. Somehow I had managed to avoid learning what I needed to know to complete this test, and suddenly I was feeling sick and hot and terrified. "I can't do this. I can't do this."

I continued to panic or blank out whenever I was expected to do math, through my entire elementary and secondary education, and barely passed the one year of algebra required to graduate from high school. I dreaded and put off taking the math course required for my college degree until the last summer before graduation, and fully expected to disrupt my long string of straight A's. But by that time, I finally had enough confidence in my own intellectual ability to approach math a bit more objectively. I worked hard-- I had a lot of catching up to do-- but I made an A. In math. And when, a few months later, I ran into my math professor in a book store, he told me that I had made the highest grade in the class and said he couldn't believe I wasn't going on to study more math... it was a personal victory of sorts.

But reading.... reading was my escape, my open door to the past, the distant, the exotic.... anywhere but the drab routine of school and small town life. When my family spent evenings in the homes of my parent's friends (who mostly didn't have kids my age) I raided their magazine racks and immersed myself for an evening in the worlds of fly fishing or farming or homemaking.

I learned most of what I knew about the mysterious world of adults by reading their magazines. When we visited my grandparents I always installed myself in a corner of the couch by the book shelf and began working my way through the stack of "Reader's Digests." Innocuous enough, for the most part, but I always zeroed in on the articles that promised some insight into forbidden territory: "How to Revitalize Your Marriage." or "Symptoms You Should Mention to Your Doctor."

Long before I was deemed old enough to be officially initiated into the mysteries of womanhood, I began reading women's magazines and puzzling over the ads that headlined: How shall I tell my daughter? Tell her what?? I searched for months, now reinforced in my notion that there were in fact BIG SECRETS that I was not in on. (I thought I might have found the answer when I was snooping around in the bathroom at my Dad's work and spotted a box of tampons sitting out in the open on a shelf. Since I had never seen this mysterious product before, I decided to investigate. I carefully unpleated the little paper with the instructions printed it and studied the diagrams. Oh my god. From what I could tell, you were supposed to stick these things up your butt. I opened one of them and looked at it.... the cardboard, the cotton, the string. No way. Maybe this was why grown-ups were always so grouchy. They were all walking around with these things up their butts. Maybe I shouldn't be in such a hurry to grow up.....)

When I was in the third grade, I read the biography of some famous naturalist (Audobon?) and was determined to become a natural scientist myself. I began to collect rocks and bones and seeds, and make "scientific" observations about them. But I was always looking for something more interesting. My father was a game hunter and frequently brought home bags of dead pheasants and quail. He "dressed" them to cook by chopping off their heads and feet and skinning them. One day I went out on the porch where my father was cutting up some birds and watched, both grossed out and fascinated, reminding myself that if I were to become a great naturalist I would have to get used to viewing the insides of birds. When my father wasn't looking, I carefully picked up one of the quail heads and slipped into the house with it. A specimen! I studied the short sharp beak, the stiff feathers, the filmy dead eyes.... tried not to look at the bloody end where the head was severed. Now what shall I do with it? I seemed to remember hearing that salt was used as a preservative, so I sneaked a salt shaker out of the kitchen. After thoroughly salting the quail head, I wrapped it in cotton, and placed it in a small white jewelry store box in a cubbyhole in.....my mother's desk. I forgot all about the head until several days later when I came home from school and found that my Mother's nose had led her to make a disgusting discovery. That was the end of experiments in taxidermy.

Our family acquired a selection of old books from an abandoned rural school house. The newest of these was probably copyrighted in the 1920's, but most were older. These victorian era moralistic tales enchanted me with their gentle lessons in manners and humility. I wished that I could trail around in all those lovely long skirts and little high button shoes with long braids like all the old-fashioned girls. Everything in modern life seemed oh, so very uncouth by comparison. I even developed some odd nineteenth century affectations, such as using a dip pen and india ink to sign my name in my books, in what I thought was quite an elegant, curliqued script, followed by "anno domini" and the year. (Latin for "in the year of our Lord") I did this with a great sense of history and ceremony, imagining how someone years hence (my own future children?) would find this book and be impressed by how cultured and refined I was. A few of them are still floating around, much to my embarrassment. "Hey, here's another one from your 'anno domini' phase!"

I suppose the history of my love affair with reading could go on and on (I guess it already has). Essentially every important influence or direction in my life has been based on something I have read.

But what I was remembering, these last few days, is that feeling of being so hooked on a story that you can't bear not to read. So hooked that you hide the book you are reading inside your textbooks at school and sneak a flashlight under the covers at night. Although I didn't know it at the time it was probably the closest thing to a mind altering experience you can have without going illegal. You become so immersed in the story that you forget about your own body and time passing around you. And when you emerge, the stuff around you is no longer the "real" world anymore. It is some strange planet on which you now find yourself, and you are seeing with other eyes and thinking with another mind. You know the characters better than your own family, better than yourself even, because their thoughts are put into words, and words are more real than all the ambiguous and unpredictable stuff around you. The boundaries between life and dreams and fiction and fantasy begin to quiver and blur like your face in a fun house mirror....

At some point in my grown up life I began to realize how little I knew, and how much work I needed to do on myself in order to be the person I thought I should be. I quit reading stories and started reading for self improvement. I have read dozens of books on how to be a better artist, writer, employee, human being.... how to decorate my home, grow a garden, program the computer, cook healthfully, be more assertive, get in shape, train the dog, interpret my dreams, save money..... And yes, I should be doing all those things.

But.....none of those books has kept me awake late at night, or been propped up on the stove while I heat the soup, or open in front of my oatmeal at 7 a.m..... like the book I have been reading this week.

The book I'm reading is called "The Little Friend" by Donna Tartt. It is a thick book and I am about three quarters of the way through it now, reading every minute I can spare. At first I found myself hoping that the plot or conclusion or technique of this story would somehow be "worth" my involvement.... "a good use of my time." But I quit caring. This book has that strange power over me, and that is all that matters now. I've just come to realize how much I missed reading something that keeps me on edge and stirs up all kinds of strange new thoughts.... how much I missed that involvement with a character that makes me feel as though I am living in a second skin.

So I've decided something: To quit reading so much self-improvement stuff, and start reading more good fiction and literature. More stories. I'm probably not going to overhaul my life anyway. Maybe I should just allow myself the joy of sitting around with my nose in a book once in a while.

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