It's Saturday, I'm home alone drinking like the cool kid that I am, and have just got finished cleaning and vacuuming my living room. Thus, I blog.
I was born in December of 1980. I was actually born the day John Lennon died (John Lennon, the Beatle? Yoko Ono? Come on kids, look it up, it was, obviously, before my time as well). It has only been in the last five years that people, upon learning of my birth date, have stopped asking me "did you know that that was the day Lennon died?" I used to respond with either "did you know that it was the ACTUAL FUCKING DAY?" or "really? Wow, in all these years NO ONE has ever mentioned it. Thanks!" It's only been in the last three years that Teacher has stopped calling me on my birthday, prefacing it with "they were talking about it being the anniversary of John Lennon's death and I remembered it was your birthday." He can be forgiven; he was born on August 11, 1979 and so spent most of his birthdays in a minivan during cross country summer vacations. Poor fuck.
We were wealthy when I was little. I don't remember most of it, just those flash bulb moments like coming down on Christmas morning to find that we'd each received our own stuffed Feival from the movie. We had pickle barrels full of He Men and Transformers. We each had our own and didn't have to share (though the boys had to share my Barbi dolls until they lost interest and we just played Teen Age Mutant Ninja Turtles). Something happened, my dad left, my mom, brothers and I moved in with our grandparents in Delaware and were poor. For a school year I slept in the same bed as my mother, a coat rack next the bed holding my clothes, a box of Barbi dolls under the nightstand. I took it in stride and assumed it was normal. I was bullied every day on the bus. That sucked. Hard.
I ended up being raised by a single mother who lied her way into jobs ("Oh yes, I can totally do that" and then copied off of others), got us scholarships to this weird little private school, and always did her best to make sure we were taken care of. She was ferociously protective. Our father died soon after I turned 10 and we lost others between then and my 14th birthday. I think she felt that if she didn't keep a close watch on us, if she didn't hold a tight reign, we'd suffer even more. So very controlling but not because she was awful but because she was awfully worried.
I went to private school from 5th through 8th grade. I was that kid who got all dolled up for picture day in 5th grade... never did that again. I wasn't an outstanding student. I got A's and in 8th grade my team won gold for our state and went to "Worlds" for Odyssey of the Mind but no one looked at me and thought "why is she not at Julliard? Why are we not putting her up a grade or two?" But that was the time when I first realized how much I liked to read and write and it was there that I first started serious vocabulary training, which is why I will drop terms like "verisimilitude" and "avuncular" and assume others know what the fuck I'm talking about. Teacher was a grade ahead of me and when he was done with a book for his English and Language Arts class, he'd give it to me to read. He was probably the only person who ever took it as a given that I was a big reader. In fact, when he returned to Abu Dhabi after his vacation home this August, he got my email about my name change and thus, my divorce, and after giving me the very obligatory "so sorry" in his most awesome fashion (dude included "blah blah blah" because he is someone who knows me and knows when there really isn't anything to say), he said something akin to "I know you are a voracious reader [he had the same vocabulary lessons and has a doctorate in education and a Masters in English education... I can drop words in his presence without fear of being looked at funny] and so you might like this book I'm reading." My man acknowledged my circumstances and went straight back to middle school, telling me what he was reading in 6th grade so that I could read it in between what I was reading in 5th grade.
That was random, but it tickled me to remember how Teacher would pass along books to me. Our mother read to all of us as children but we all took to it differently. Eldest isn't a reader, it's just not his thing. Teacher would like to read more but is too busy. I'm never too busy to read and I remember J getting annoyed because there would be times where I would do it obsessively. He'd want to talk or interact but I'd be stuck in a book and that was the only thing I wanted to do, read. There are times when I can't, where the only thing I can read is a blog post, not even an article in the news. Those are horrible times that make me angry and frustrated because god damn it, I like to fucking read. When I was undergoing optic neuritis, I made J promise he'd read to me if I lost my vision.
I think it probably has something to do with how I coped with trauma in my early years. I'm terribly unobservant but I can lose myself in a book and picture and hear everything. Maybe I escaped from life into fiction. Maybe I just like to read. Who knows. But libraries are awesome and dagnabbit, kids should read more and play video games less and get off my lawn and so on and so forth. Where IS that Ovaltine?
I thought, as did most of my family, that I'd be a writer when I grew up. When I eventually got my ass into college after getting kicked out of home and dropping out of one school, I majored in English with this goal in mind. I figured wanting to be a writer was like wanting to be a rock star so I also majored in Psychology so that I'd have a career back up (ha!). I eventually learned that I just didn't have it in me to be an author so since then I've just read and made fun of poorly constructed emails that are sent to "Distribution" at work. Seriously, there are times when I wonder if our corporate staff gives a shit because some of these emails have the WORST and most GLARING typos and grammatical errors that I just think "did we do a proof read or did we just hit send?" Cause I totally use the Royal "we" whenever possible.
This was meant to be a little bio of me but it has really turned into a biography of my love of reading. I'm dedicating it to my little G. Face, my gorgeous niece who was born 28 years and 1 week after me, Teacher's daughter. I hope that she ends up loving to read as much as her daddy does and as much as her Fraenka does. I also dedicate it to Teacher, who has, after all, been a tremendous big brother.
I was born in December of 1980. I was actually born the day John Lennon died (John Lennon, the Beatle? Yoko Ono? Come on kids, look it up, it was, obviously, before my time as well). It has only been in the last five years that people, upon learning of my birth date, have stopped asking me "did you know that that was the day Lennon died?" I used to respond with either "did you know that it was the ACTUAL FUCKING DAY?" or "really? Wow, in all these years NO ONE has ever mentioned it. Thanks!" It's only been in the last three years that Teacher has stopped calling me on my birthday, prefacing it with "they were talking about it being the anniversary of John Lennon's death and I remembered it was your birthday." He can be forgiven; he was born on August 11, 1979 and so spent most of his birthdays in a minivan during cross country summer vacations. Poor fuck.
We were wealthy when I was little. I don't remember most of it, just those flash bulb moments like coming down on Christmas morning to find that we'd each received our own stuffed Feival from the movie. We had pickle barrels full of He Men and Transformers. We each had our own and didn't have to share (though the boys had to share my Barbi dolls until they lost interest and we just played Teen Age Mutant Ninja Turtles). Something happened, my dad left, my mom, brothers and I moved in with our grandparents in Delaware and were poor. For a school year I slept in the same bed as my mother, a coat rack next the bed holding my clothes, a box of Barbi dolls under the nightstand. I took it in stride and assumed it was normal. I was bullied every day on the bus. That sucked. Hard.
I ended up being raised by a single mother who lied her way into jobs ("Oh yes, I can totally do that" and then copied off of others), got us scholarships to this weird little private school, and always did her best to make sure we were taken care of. She was ferociously protective. Our father died soon after I turned 10 and we lost others between then and my 14th birthday. I think she felt that if she didn't keep a close watch on us, if she didn't hold a tight reign, we'd suffer even more. So very controlling but not because she was awful but because she was awfully worried.
I went to private school from 5th through 8th grade. I was that kid who got all dolled up for picture day in 5th grade... never did that again. I wasn't an outstanding student. I got A's and in 8th grade my team won gold for our state and went to "Worlds" for Odyssey of the Mind but no one looked at me and thought "why is she not at Julliard? Why are we not putting her up a grade or two?" But that was the time when I first realized how much I liked to read and write and it was there that I first started serious vocabulary training, which is why I will drop terms like "verisimilitude" and "avuncular" and assume others know what the fuck I'm talking about. Teacher was a grade ahead of me and when he was done with a book for his English and Language Arts class, he'd give it to me to read. He was probably the only person who ever took it as a given that I was a big reader. In fact, when he returned to Abu Dhabi after his vacation home this August, he got my email about my name change and thus, my divorce, and after giving me the very obligatory "so sorry" in his most awesome fashion (dude included "blah blah blah" because he is someone who knows me and knows when there really isn't anything to say), he said something akin to "I know you are a voracious reader [he had the same vocabulary lessons and has a doctorate in education and a Masters in English education... I can drop words in his presence without fear of being looked at funny] and so you might like this book I'm reading." My man acknowledged my circumstances and went straight back to middle school, telling me what he was reading in 6th grade so that I could read it in between what I was reading in 5th grade.
That was random, but it tickled me to remember how Teacher would pass along books to me. Our mother read to all of us as children but we all took to it differently. Eldest isn't a reader, it's just not his thing. Teacher would like to read more but is too busy. I'm never too busy to read and I remember J getting annoyed because there would be times where I would do it obsessively. He'd want to talk or interact but I'd be stuck in a book and that was the only thing I wanted to do, read. There are times when I can't, where the only thing I can read is a blog post, not even an article in the news. Those are horrible times that make me angry and frustrated because god damn it, I like to fucking read. When I was undergoing optic neuritis, I made J promise he'd read to me if I lost my vision.
I think it probably has something to do with how I coped with trauma in my early years. I'm terribly unobservant but I can lose myself in a book and picture and hear everything. Maybe I escaped from life into fiction. Maybe I just like to read. Who knows. But libraries are awesome and dagnabbit, kids should read more and play video games less and get off my lawn and so on and so forth. Where IS that Ovaltine?
I thought, as did most of my family, that I'd be a writer when I grew up. When I eventually got my ass into college after getting kicked out of home and dropping out of one school, I majored in English with this goal in mind. I figured wanting to be a writer was like wanting to be a rock star so I also majored in Psychology so that I'd have a career back up (ha!). I eventually learned that I just didn't have it in me to be an author so since then I've just read and made fun of poorly constructed emails that are sent to "Distribution" at work. Seriously, there are times when I wonder if our corporate staff gives a shit because some of these emails have the WORST and most GLARING typos and grammatical errors that I just think "did we do a proof read or did we just hit send?" Cause I totally use the Royal "we" whenever possible.
This was meant to be a little bio of me but it has really turned into a biography of my love of reading. I'm dedicating it to my little G. Face, my gorgeous niece who was born 28 years and 1 week after me, Teacher's daughter. I hope that she ends up loving to read as much as her daddy does and as much as her Fraenka does. I also dedicate it to Teacher, who has, after all, been a tremendous big brother.
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