The first gift I remember receiving from my mum was a novel for my fourth birthday. I still remember the story. The king of a village was dying, and they sent two boys to the spirit world to get an item that would resuscitate him. One of the boys had a terrible character, while the other boy was as sweet as honey.
I guess the moral of the story was if you are a good kid, you will be safe and successful, but if you are naughty, you will get into trouble. I didn’t like how the bad kid ended up, so, guess who I became?
I Got to Role-play
There was this other book mum got me, about a teddy bear that liked to solve problems. The only problem was that he could only think properly while eating some licorice candy. And he ate a lot of licorice because he had to solve a lot of problems.
What do you think happened to me? I started the terrible habit of needing to eat while solving problems. Thank goodness I never had access to licorice because the U.S. FDA made a recent statement that eating too much licorice could lead to heart failure.
I Could Travel the World from the Comfort of My Home
Whenever I was stuck in the pages of an adventure book, I could see myself in those places mentioned – Casablanca, Egypt, Paris, and even some of the fictional places.
I could picture those places, and found myself transported there just from reading those books.
I Learned Some Good Habits… and Some Bad Ones
It was from a book I learned to wash my hands after riding the porcelain bus, cutting my nails, and before eating my food. Maybe it was the pictures in the books that reinforced my learning. Who knows?
Remember the licorice story above? Well, there were other bad habits I learned. Habits I’m too ashamed to mention in this post. Well, I’ll just mention one other. I take people too seriously. Many people are not honest. I can’t tell the difference!
I Had Some Wonderful Conversations
My vocabulary grew with the new words I learned in books. Words like licorice (there’s that word again!), gargantuan, decrepit, and hoity-toity.
The conversations in the books were more intelligent than discussions I was having in the real world; kids around me were more interested in speaking the vernacular of the locality where I was based.
I Never Felt Lonely
I was a loner as a kid. I couldn’t mix with other kids because I didn’t understand them. However my best friends were in the pages of books. I had fun watching them get into trouble, and finding solutions to their thousand and one problems.
I could stay holed up in the house, quiet as a mouse, reading my books (couldn’t find a word that rhymed with mouse, sorry), and no one would know I was around.
Reading Elevated My Mood
People used to say that I was always cheerful. The secret was that when I was in a bad mood, I took solace in my novels. By the time I finished reading, I had forgotten what made me angry in the first place.
Reading was like an antidepressant. It made me happy, excited and full of hope. It was my place to escape from all the troubles I faced.
One could say reading affected me in many positive (and some negative) ways.
What about you? Did you have a reading culture as a child? What was your reading experience like for you?