My Reading Life Part The First

My mama started reading aloud to me at night when I was so young that I don’t remember when she started, and she continued it well beyond when I could read for myself. Some of my happiest childhood memories are of her reading me Lois Lenski (most of her works are sadly out of print,) Little House on the Prairie, and Lassie. She tried to do the accents in Lassie. I’m rapidly closing in on 51, and we still laugh about that. I could read before I started kindergarten. I remember doing phonics lessons in kindergarten thru second grade and thinking, ‘Are the rest of these yahoos idiots? Why are my teachers spending so much time on this?’ I was a very judgmental six year old. I’ve since learned to be more compassionate, as my daddy and my youngest son are severely dyslexic. And I spell about as well as a particularly dense pigeon. Should have paid more attention to those phonics lessons, I suppose

In the first grade I wrote my first (and last) book of poetry. I wrote five poems, each on their own sheet of wide rule notebook paper. I carefully and horribly illustrated (I draw about as well as the aforementioned pigeon can) each one, and ‘bound’ the book with yarn that I laced through the notebook paper holes. I can only remember one of the poems:

The world is big/The world is round/I wish I lived in another town.

Stick that it in your pipe and smoke it, Mary Oliver.

Around the third grade, I discovered Harriet the Spy. I quickly decided to spy on my friends and classmates, but they were so boring that I turned them into Russian operatives in an activated sleeper cell. I came of age in the 70s and 80s. The Cold War was heavy on my mind.

My fourth grade teacher, Ms Gainey, was the greatest, most life changing teacher I ever had. She introduced my to Shel Silverstien (the poetry books, not the man himself, unfortunately.) My mama bought all of his books, and we read them over and over. And I read them over and over to my own offspring. My teacher had several fun activities we could do on Fridays once we finished our school work for the week. She had this amazing pillow fort. It was surrounded on three sides by bookshelves and full of giant throw pillows. While most of my classmates raced through their final lessons of the week and fought over the domino run, I was all about that fort. Maybe it was because I am autistic and love cozy little spaces, but to me it was heaven. I still love to be surrounded by pillows. My husband tells me we are one throw pillow or Squishmallow away from rendering the bed unusable due to lack of space.

Around the same time, I became obsessed with S.E. Hinton. I think I read The Outsiders at least fifty times. Then the movie came out. My BFF and I went on opening night. Although I don’t think cosplay was a thing back then, I cosplayed. I wore a black muscle shirt with a denim jacket with the sleeves ripped off and ratty jeans. I also slicked back my hair. My BFF was probably embarrassed to be seen with me, and my mother can best be described as “long-suffering.” I was, and still to this day, can be described in one word. That word is dorky.

Then came Judy Blume. Oh Judy, I could write a ten page essay on how much I love you. Instead of boring you, dear reader, with that, I highly recommend that you look up the song Judy Blume by Amanda Palmer. If you are a woman of a certain age and can listen to that song without crying I’ll eat my hat. I read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret till it quite literally fell apart. I wish Ms. Blume would dust off her typewriter and write Are You There God? It’s Me, Wendy, and it could be all about going through menopause. If anyone knows how to contact her, tell her she’s free to steal the idea.

I read constantly. I was the kid who would hide a book behind a textbook during class. I mean, why learn how to multiply fractions when you could stay gold with Ponyboy? I should note here that I am REALLY bad at math. In fact, I suck at pretty much anything covered by STEM.

I’m not mentioning any of this to brag about my early reading skillz. I am a one trick Pony(boy). Reading is all I’ve got.

With that, I’ll wind this up. Stick around. Maybe next Monday I’ll talk about reading in middle and high school. The excitement never ends around here.

Happy Reading Y’all,

Wendy

yo