Reading development curiosity

Were you a voracious reader? Were you ever made fun of as a child for this characteristic? At what age? How did you handle it - did you hide it, or ignore the boozh-wah-zee? (bourgeoisie, I can spell)

Did you grow up amongst readers? Did you feel support for your readerly traits? Was it just out in the rest of the world that you were the odd duck? Or did you never feel out of place no matter where you went?

Have you ever felt discriminated against because you're a reader? Did it fade away along with childhood? Or do you find vestiges left in your adult life from time to time?

I ask because I was recently reading a thread where people were remembering times that adults had tried to make them stop reading "for their own good" - with one person saying that her teacher went so far as to staple her book closed so she'd go out to recess. It got me to thinking how I would have handled something like that as a child versus as an adult. Which in turn led me to wondering what the reader-developmental-lives of my reader friends were like. Thus.

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I don't remember a time when I couldn't read. I learned early and fast - one of my three earliest memories involves reading a book to myself because my mother was taking a nap. She was a reader and I followed her example. The rest of my siblings, for many years at least, were not readers. Being defined as not just A reader, but THE reader in the family made me feel special and lonely na enkrat. My parents defined me as a reader, my teachers defined me as a reader, and I came to define myself by that term for a really long time, too. I wore it like a badge of honor at the same time I knew it's what separated me from most of my peers.

The way I saw and experienced it during my scanty years in elementary school, there was almost no one else who read on the same level as me. I'd been reading for YEARS by the time I wound up in kindergarten. My first 1st grade teacher put me on a special 6th grade reading program, gave me special books that no one else in the class got, and even had a special teacher's aid come in just for me to read to him. They eventually put me in an accelerated program 2 or 3 days a week based solely on my reading skills - it had to be just that, since I was remarkably ordinary at almost everything else that 1st grade offers.

During my second 1st grade experience there was no accelerated program, and everything was in Spanish, so I was on the same footing as the other kids again (sort of), but I still defined myself as The Kid Who Read, and always had a book in my backpack. Finding other kids who liked to read as much as I did was rare for me, and if there were any others in my class I don't recall them. Most of the boys played sports or ran around outside, and the girls didn't really have any use for me, nor I for them. This was they year I spent recesses indoors, sitting on a radiator reading the Chronicles of Narnia for the second time through. This was also the year a bully jumped on me from behind, and I asked what was going on in Shakespeare ("Who art thou?! WHO ART THOU?!")

The next year, homeschooled, there was much more time to read anything and everything and to easily ignore the aspects of school I disliked. (Don't ask me to do long division for you). Mom frequently took us to the library, and while I loved it, I think my brother and sisters just tolerated it. My mom read, and she read TO us, but for years it felt like just she and I. I knew my dad read, but he read boring things like politics and the non-funny articles of the Reader's Digest. I read all the books of the Wizard of Oz. And all the Happy Hollisters. And anything Dr Seuss. And Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew together. I read and read and read and read. I borrowed lots of books from my neighbors, who had lots of books, but never seemed to read them or care about them. I think I still have one or two from them that I never returned.

From the neighbors I started reading the Baby-Sitters Club books, because they were there. Words printed on paper HAD to pass before my eyes at one point or another. And it was at this point, 11 or 12, when I first was told to not read something. "They're girls books!" Dad said. "What do you get from girls books?" I'd always felt like the only reader around, but at least in my home it was accepted. The only meal Jeremy didn't read during was Dinner - all other food-on-table situations were fair game. Home was safe. Home was trusted.

And then it wasn't for some reason. After that talk with my dad (really, he'd come up and sat me on my bed just to tell me he didn't want me reading the girly Baby-Sitters Club books anymore) I began to feel like there was something oddly wrong with my compulsion to read. The next day, after that talk, I made a hole in the fabric that covered the underside of my bed and hid all my borrowed Baby-Sitters Club books in there. For a long time any book with a picture of a girl on it went into my Vault.

I tried to get my brother and sisters interested in reading, maybe so I'd have someone to talk about books with. On lazy Sunday afternoons when we had to be quiet and demure, I would offer to read to them while they drew, or played with toys or whatever. I was just ambient background noise, but I was okay with it. Maybe something I read would stick with them. I read them The Headless Cupid until one afternoon when my dad sat in on the reading, and I ended up reading the chapters where the kids are trying to join their step-sister in her practice of the occult. It's a very funny sequence in the book with all the trials, and the resemblance between what's in the book and what is REAL occultism is absolutely laughable, but my dad hit the roof. He didn't take the book away from me, but he lectured in a very stern voice about introducing things Satan likes to my brothers and sisters. In addition to wondering why I liked girl-books, now I began wondering if I was The Bad One of us kids, too.

And later, as I was reading them The Minden Curse my dad blew up again. There's not even anything resembling magic in this book - curse is used because the protagonist hates that he's always at the center of any excitement. But I got yelled at again for potential witchcraft indoctrination. And both The Minden Curse and More Minden Curses went into my Vault.

After that I stopped sharing the things I read with my family. I stopped even hoping that anyone would ever want to talk about books with me. I eventually became defiant, reading all sorts of books on magic, and the occult, and the supernatural, and girl books, and boy books, and everything that made me scared to let my dad see it, and frankly anything and everything I could get my hands on. My brothers and sisters all eventually grew up to read, particularly my sister Gretchen and my youngest brother Isaiah who reads at the table like I did, but for the most part I don't often feel that I have anything bookish in common with them, and even more rarely will I share with them a book I've read.

I still always have a book to read at work, during lunch, which I realized I use as a shield and a flag - as a shield, being immersed in a book keeps me from having to socialize with my co-workers who might walk by. As a flag I hope it says to any other readers, "I will put down my book to get to know you if you'll ask what I'm reading!"

I have lots of reader friends these days - my friend Rachael and my dearest Nancy are kindred book spirits. My Players Anonymous friends are a good support and allow for critical discussion of any book. But at home I still feel odd - my parents dualistic examples still confuse me, I guess, with my mother on one side, stocking our shelves with any book you could want and encouraging me to read anything the piqued my fancy; and my father on the other side encouraging me to hide books, setting boundaries for what was appropriate. It was all over, many years ago now, and no hard feelings are left, only amusement at it all, but it's certainly influenced my life.