I don’t remember a time when I didn’t read. There must have been one; had I been born with a book in my hand I think Mom would have mentioned it. But at different times in my life, my reading “style,” as it were, has changed. Now that I’m officially a senior citizen, I have slipped into a new phase of reading.
One of my earliest memories of reading was a scene at the public library in Oklahoma City. This was before we moved to the farm, so it had to be prior to the third grade (1949 or 1950?). I wanted a particular book and found it. When I went to check it out, the librarian said that book was from the adult section and I wasn’t allowed to read it. When I later told Mom what happened, she raced to the library and gave them a good scolding. I doubt if anything changed, except after that she checked out the books I wanted on her card. That a librarian would try to censor my reading made Mom spitting mad; she trusted my judgment.
As a kid I could read for hours uninterrupted. And if I thought I might be interrupted, I would head to the pasture where I had a variety of hideouts to sit quietly and read. During class was a good time to read also. I would sit at the back, prop up my reading book, cleverly hidden behind the textbook, and read away; of course now, after years as a teacher, I realize my instructors knew what was going on, but looked the other way as, generally, I kept an A average and caused no problems.
Another good reading time was on the bus. Once in high school the ride was close to an hour. I would sit in the back of the bus, scoot down, prop my knees on the back of the seat in front and read undisturbed.
When I first went to college, my reading habits changed: I started having fun, which hadn’t happened much before. I had so much fun not reading that I got kicked out for bad grades. Then into the Navy for four years, where I once again got into the habit of reading every chance I got. My three-foot by three-foot locker always had more books than anything else; it’s a wonder I passed any inspection. In Vietnam my battle station was Damage Control Central. My ship, the USS Galveston, did a lot of firing onto shore in support of aircraft raids, but as far as I know no one ever fired back at us (the Galveston was a large ship with scary looking guided missiles); that meant that my time in Damage Control was spent reading, since there was never any damage to control, and there were hours and hours and hours of just sitting. And reading.
After the Navy I returned to college, ready, this time, to study and to read, read, read. As an English major I needed to do that. And that was a habit I kept up for many years, even into my retirement.
But, I’m not the man I used to be, nor am I the reader I used to be. I keep a list of all the books I read, and each year for the last five years or so, the list has gotten smaller each year. The truth of the matter is that I simply can’t read with the same concentration I used to. Most of that is physical: my knees start to hurt, my back begins to ache, my eyes blur; the chair becomes painful. I’m easily distracted by noise and . . . well, just about everything. It’s easier just to pop in a movie than to read deeply like I used to. I could probably fix some this: a new, more comfortable chair, , exercises, knee surgery, time travel. But I think I’ll just have to lower my expectations, and perhaps read for quality rather than quantity. So, back to Proust . . .
