
In case you’re wondering, I did not dress up for Halloween yesterday, not even as a hipster. Today’s the first day of November, which is surprising. Where did all the time go? The leaves are suddenly orange and red. Soon, it’ll be Thanksgiving and after that Christmas. The year will be over soon and I’m at loss at how quickly time flies.
November is a month to be thankful for various things and rather than talk about how books changed my life drastically, I’m going to talk about my first memory of books and the “moment” when I realized books were always going to be a part of my life.
My earliest memory of books starts at age two/three, when my grandparents were reading to me. I feel like most people expect me to say that they were reading some classic childhood story to me and that’s what I remember, but that’s not the case. It’s not to say that they didn’t read stories to me, which they did, but the earliest memory of books is a critical thinking problem about ladders. Early childhood development, I suppose.
For me, it was those moments, the critical thinking problems that I remember and love the best. I remember drawing on the pages (what two year old doesn’t?) and coming up with ridiculous solutions to fix whatever problem we were working on. I don’t consider that as learning or something of the “tiger-grandparent” sort because I liked it.
When I was six, I discovered books. It’s not that I didn’t know what they were before, but it was during a visit to the library when I thought, “Books can take me places.” From then on, I kept going to the library and reading became a part of my life. A very integral part of my life. I’ve been reading ever since, throughout the good times, through the stressful and draining times, through everything.
What are your earliest memories of reading?