Just wondering.......

[slayda]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

YES! The Book Mobile was my favorite thing to come down the road, except the ice cream truck, when I was a kid. BTW - Slayda, go to the lounge and see the long joke I posted about driving in B'ham.

Good ebook! But some from the northeast might not understand the term "packing" even though they would surely understand the concept.
Thanks.

P.S. I try to not drive that far south. Only been lost there a few dozen times & I have a good sense of direction. However it is still not as bad as DC.
y'all take care, y' hear.

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by mellina 52

I'm 55 and going strong. Somedays I feel alot older.

Yes, some days are like that! Which is why you want to really enjoy the days that aren't. A little Karma to you.........

[bbusybookworm]

Hmm, 25 Here, and as some have mentioned, I can't remember a time when I couldn't read. i can remember not being able to read some books but never not being able to read at all.

When I was really young, we didn't have too many other options for entertainment. Tanzania in the 80's was a nice place to live, but you could not find many luxuries. luckly, my dad was able to go to Kenya regularly, and always bought a lot of books for us. (on a side note, those books probably were well worth it as they passed through a lot of different hands, as we outgrew them, and they probably still are)

I also had the dubious advantage that my parents when we moved back to India felt that we was watching too much TV, and as such removed the T.V.'s (yes I mean the plural, 4 if I rember correctly) from the house when I was in primary school. But they did give a big allowance to buy books and got me ton of magazine subscriptions.

I wasn't that much of a library goer as there were no decent library's nearby, and I managed to get through most of the school's in a couple of years. Instead, I loved to visit the local book market, where on every sunday, hawkers would line line one road in town, and you could find a ton of old books really cheaply. I discovered a lot of authors whom I would probably not have read as their books were not available for sale any more or if they were, they were too expensive.

But I digress.What I do find a little sad that not that many people my age like to read.

[Spartacus2112]

34 here....still debating on device!

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Elsi

I can't remember a time before I was able to read. They tell me that I was reading at 3. I have had many short-lived hobbies, but recreational reading is the one thing that has stuck with me for my entire life.

I'm curious: did either of your parents read to you as a child?

My mother did, every night, and told me when I was older that I had the idea before I could actually do it myself, as she'd skip ahead to try to get to other chores, and I point unerringly at the "skipped" section and say "Mommy, you missed this part!"

Like you, I don't recall not knowing how to read. I've always read anything that didn't read me first, and a fair bit that did, and I know where I got the habit.
_____
Dennis

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I've always read anything that didn't read me first, and a fair bit that did

very strange mental image of reading an astronaute bunny with ears full of text...

i also don't remember not knowing how to read, however i do have one "snapshot" memory (i just remember the image of the situation, not any action that was happening) of learning to read. i must have been around
3, since my sister was a baby, on my mother's lap. we were all sitting on the sofa so my mother could help me, and i was holding a children's book on my lap that was so huge (proportionally...) that it covered my legs and only my feet were sticking out at the end. i'm pretty sure it wasn't so much the book that was gigantic, but me who was really short at the time.

i used to read so much that one summer when i was a child my mother told me she was going to take my books away so i would be forced to spend some time outside. ironic, since she is the one who pushed me to read to begin with. i protested so much that she gave in though and let me keep them. even if she hadn't, it would have been materially impossible to hide *all* the books in the house, so it was a flawed plan to begin with. (also a really stupid one, but that's another discussion).

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

very strange mental image of reading an astronaute bunny with ears full of text...

Nah. Think semaphores.

i also don't remember not knowing how to read, however i do have one "snapshot" memory (i just remember the image of the situation, not any action that was happening) of learning to read. i must have been around
3, since my sister was a baby, on my mother's lap. we were all sitting on the sofa so my mother could help me, and i was holding a children's book on my lap that was so huge (proportionally...) that it covered my legs and only my feet were sticking out at the end. i'm pretty sure it wasn't so much the book that was gigantic, but me who was really short at the time.

My earliest discrete memories also date from about three years old, but they are random snaphots. Continuing memories in a sequence don't really start till I was about 5 and in kindergarten,

i used to read so much that one summer when i was a child my mother told me she was going to take my books away so i would be forced to spend some time outside. ironic, since she is the one who pushed me to read to begin with. i protested so much that she gave in though and let me keep them. even if she hadn't, it would have been materially impossible to hide *all* the books in the house, so it was a flawed plan to begin with. (also a really stupid one, but that's another discussion).

I never had that problem. Mine was blitzing through school books in about two weeks, then getting in trouble for reading other material in class. (Though one English teacher I remember fondly introduced me to Tolkien, deciding that if I was going to read extra-curricular stuff in class, she would at least point me at stuff worth reading...)
______
Dennis

[RickyMaveety]

Me too. I started school at four, and I could read before then, so I would guess I started reading at 2 or 3 years of age. Before then, my mother always read to me. I still have the books she read from, the Wizard of OZ was one of my favorites.

Then, when I was about eight, I joined a book club. They sent you an order form and you checked off all the books you wanted. Of course, you had to pay for them, but my agreement with my mother was that, as long as I read every one of the books I purchased, I could purchase all the books I wanted.

In order to read all those books (I would often purchase as many as 30 or more each month), I spent most of each weekend in my room, in bed, with all of the books I hadn't read yet piled on one side of me .... and then slowly, as the weekend progressed, I would put each book from that stack on to the "read" stack which was growing on the other side of me.

My mother would frequently stick her head in my door and practically beg me to go outside and play. My reply was always the same .... "Excuse me, but I am reading. Would you please shut the door?"

Poor mom.

[Patricia]

I had finished all the school reading texts by the time I was eight. So they just let me have the run of the library.

[RickyMaveety]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I never had that problem. Mine was blitzing through school books in about two weeks, then getting in trouble for reading other material in class. (Though one English teacher I remember fondly introduced me to Tolkien, deciding that if I was going to read extra-curricular stuff in class, she would at least point me at stuff worth reading...)
______
Dennis

My teachers were wonderful about letting me do extracurricular stuff in class. Most all of them were even fine about me setting my own pace in most subjects, and doing math while they did reading, or vice versa. But, I think they were mostly happy just to have one student in class who was always (1) quiet, (2) hard at work, and (3) who tested off the charts.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Nah. Think semaphores.

how silly of me. i should have guessed.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I never had that problem. Mine was blitzing through school books in about two weeks, then getting in trouble for reading other material in class. (Though one English teacher I remember fondly introduced me to Tolkien, deciding that if I was going to read extra-curricular stuff in class, she would at least point me at stuff worth reading...)
______
Dennis

when i first started school, i knew how to read and the other children didn't. the only school work i can remember from that year was coloring in those blue copies (what were those called again ?? you made them on a machine with a drum, and you turned a crank to make the copies manually) of pictures of numerals, with a corresponding number of frogs, or rabbits, or apples, or what have you. i was reeeeeally bored.

the teacher didn't know what to do with me, so she put me at a little table by myself in the book corner and gave me blank notebooks to write my own stories in. she also had a box of laminated cards with educational activities on them that i could do ; this was the most sophisticated program she had for "gifted" students. i only stayed at that school for one year ; after that i went to a school which was more experimental and not intimated by a little kid who already knew how to read ; they managed to find things for me to do that were on an appropriate level.

Originally Posted by RickyMaveety

My teachers were wonderful about letting me do extracurricular stuff in class. Most all of them were even fine about me setting my own pace in most subjects, and doing math while they did reading, or vice versa. But, I think they were mostly happy just to have one student in class who was always (1) quiet, (2) hard at work, and (3) who tested off the charts.

heh... yes, i also was always doing whatever i wanted in school. it was a lot more interesting. and since i also fulfilled the three criteria, the teachers were happy too. although i do remember that one of them was always harassing me because during the recess i would sit on the steps and read, instead of running around the playground screaming my head off. she would tell me not to sit there, because the concrete was cold and i would get "chillblains". i'm still not exactly sure what chillblains are. i never got any. i got through a lot of books during those recesses though.

Originally Posted by Patricia

I had finished all the school reading texts by the time I was eight. So they just let me have the run of the library.

the library was my favorite place in the world, when i was a child. i think if they had let me, i would have lived there.

[mellina 52]

Thank you Desertgrandma for karma. Have a wonderful day.

[basschick]

wow, you guys brought back some memories for me. i, too, cannot remember a time when i could not read.

besides my own reading, my mom read a chapter to us (2 if we were lucky) every night without fail and then we'd get our own reading time before bed. oz books were some of my favorites, and both my sister and i loved getting new books as gifts. my mom loved getting books, too, and she also loved scifi mags like analog

[pshrynk]

I have very fond memories of learning how to read. My mom was adamant that I not get ahead of my peers, so did not teach me to read. Instead, she encouraged me to run and play and interact witht he people in the county home she and my dad ran. So, I spent a very happy youth on a farm, herding cats, milking cows, and interacting with people who heard voices and had discussions with the toaster.

When I got to school, I had already learned the alphabet, becasue I was a curious little boy, but hadn't bothered with reading, because there was always something intersting to do. When they handed out the books to learn reading, I asked if it was okay to learn how to read, now. The teacher gave me a funny look and said that that was the whole idea.

By the end of the first semester of first grade, I was reading the 6th grade reading texts and driving my teacher insane with requests to get more books. The librarian of my school started getting books from the high school to give me something to do.

Learned about romantic interactions from Mallory's 'Morte d'Arthur'. I was a strange little kid.

[nekokami]

Were any of us not strange little kids? (Er... are any of us not now?)

I sort of vaguely remember getting worksheets (they were called mimeographs, Z-chan), from teacher friends my parents had, with early reading exercises. Apparently I was a late bloomer-- I didn't start reading until I was 4. My mom didn't get a chance to read to me, though she read to my younger brother. By the time she had realized she might want to be reading to us, I was too impatient to wait for someone else to take the time to pronounce the words on the page. In first grade, they sent me to fourth grade for reading, second grade for math, and left me alone in the corner of the room the rest of the time. I remember the fourth-grade teacher had to take me aside and ask me not to correct the reading of the other students when we would read out loud in a circle, because that was her job, and because it made the other students feel bad. By third grade, my parents had had to write a note to ask the school to let me have access to the whole school library, not just the "age appropriate" books. But by then I was bringing in my own books (or town library books) more often than not. My mother remembers that kids would come to the door and ask if I could come out and play, and she'd go to my room and I'd say "I'm reading." She'd go back and tell the kids, "I'm sorry, she's reading." (She also says I complained later that I didn't have any friends. I don't think this was quite the case. I think I complained that the people who weren't my friends were pretty nasty to me, rather than leaving me alone to read.)

Now, at 42, I read pretty much every night, getting through three books a week, typically. Usually it's one new book, two re-reads per week, or something like that. The ratio varies a bit when I'm in graduate classes, or if another hobby has grabbed me. This spring I got interested in 3D computer modeling, so I was reading online and fiddling with software, so I may have dropped down to 1-1.5 books a week for a while.

And my first computer was also a C64-- unless you count the VT100 in the basement with the 300 baud modem line to a VAX.