Open New Doors!

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Calvin and Hobbes is probably the best literature I have ever read. Despite their many differences my parents love Calvin and Hobbes, they love to read. Drawn into a great book, my imagination can throw open doors, and run free. I learned that from my parents, but Bill Waterson showed me in his comic strip how to walk through those doors. It wasn’t from the limited television I was exposed to as a kid it was long before computers became so common.

My mother’s house was full of books, and she loved to read to me as much as I loved the sound of her voice. She would read me fairy tales, ghost stories, and holiday stories when I was little. Throughout grade school long after I learned to read, she would often help me by reading out loud my history books cuddled up on the couch in front of a lit fireplace. I could lose myself in the visual images the words she spoke drew in my mind. This was one spark that would ignite a fire inside of me.

My father too was an avid reader of books, and bestowed the same ravenous appetite in me. I didn’t read a whole lot of ‘real’ books at first though; there was lots of Calvin and Hobbes, and comic books for me as a youngster at my dad’s house. This gradually turned into full novels, read while tucked away in my woodland home on the weekends at my Dad’s. It was a week long journey I took from the Shire to the lonely mountain, back to the shire across Middle-Earth to Mordor and back again. Forced to read The Hobbit for summer reading before starting high school, I finally found the setting for my imagination.

Television was not watched much when I was young. My parents always had me going outside to play whether it was with the kids in the neighborhood, or into the woods. Not that I don’t have fond memories of curling up on the couch with the family to watch a movie on the VCR. It’s just now the importance to me is that my parents restricted the time my brain spent melting into mush. I am grateful for that.

I never even bought a television until I was almost 26 years old. That was a behavior encouraged by my parent’s lack of interest in that medium. This has helped me to live a life full of crazy experiences, always on the go, always engaged in the moment. A life I someday hope to turn into a book written by yours truly. A desire fueled by the flames of all the books I have read.