On reading

My bedtime stories at night were usually simplified updates of what my mother had read that evening, which was often a Stephen King novel. She’d pare down the details but I got the gist, quickly enough to know they were excellent stories.

I soon devoured them, myself, an elementary-school student reading It, Tommyknockers, Needful Things, and The Stand. Whatever she read next would soon be on my list, too.

With my father, our reading time was spent over anthology books of Calvin & Hobbes. He voiced Calvin, Calvin’s dad, Moe. I voiced Hobbes, Calvin’s mom, Susie, and Mrs. Wormwood. If you’re familiar with C&H, the vocabulary is difficult. Oftentimes, so is the topic — or at least, there’s a secondary layer to it that my father also enjoyed while I couldn’t quite yet.

By now, you can guess what kind of reader I was, but I still love the memories of my father and I, side by side on the sofa with the anthology spread across both our laps, as he helped his six-year-old reliably pronounce “Transmogrification.” The illustrations showed me what it meant, of course.

I believe these two formative reading foundations combined into something singularly devious, in my brain. Mischief with malice. Hilarity with the stakes of death.

***

My parents got very excited when I was three, because I read a Dr. Seuss book out loud, by myself. Dr. Seuss, for your information, is often classified around a second grade(ish) reading level, because of the difficulty of the vocabulary and the unusual cadence of sentence structure.

Sadly, I’d only memorized it. But it wasn’t all I’d memorized. I could run through quite the gamut on my bookshelf, and by four, I was reading independently. Blazing with pride, my parents sat me on a stool in front of my extended family to show me off, and for whatever reason, this did not translate into future comfort with public speaking.

(To be clear, I believe it should have helped, at the very least. I would encourage my child to do that sort of thing, early and often.)

When I started sixth grade, the middle school began a program called Accelerated Reader. It was on the computer, which was really really cool, and it would log our reading achievements along the school year. We’d have goals to hit and other easy-sounding things I glossed right past — until it became clear that the database offered very few books I wanted to read, and the specific books for my age range were for “babies.”

I protested at once. This eleven-or-twelve-year-old period is the one in which I’d written 80 pages of a girl riding horses in my own Word document at home. Clearly, I was too advanced for this nonsense.

To my relief, the teachers said we’d be tested on reading comprehension and assigned a general skill level to aim for. Books beneath that level would be worth very few points. If we extended ourselves to more difficult material and passed the comprehension quiz at the end, we’d rack up reading points quickly.

Challenge accepted. I cracked my knuckles and cracked on, earning a “College+” designation for my reading level. This delighted me, for obvious reasons.

It meant that I annihilated my annual goal by reading and acing Gone with the Wind, thus free to read whatever I liked for the rest of the year. One book (which I wouldn’t have picked up on my own but thoroughly enjoyed, so the program did work), one quiz, and I was done — until seventh grade, anyway.

My best friend asked if I could possibly take the GwtW quiz for her, too. I considered. Being ethically flexible, even at age eleven… well, why not?

More classmates began to ask and I began to charge ice cream money for it. I made a tidy bit of pocket change. This lasted through middle school.