who thought you to read and write?
Answers
I don’t think anyone really ever officially ‘taught’ me to read. I was probably most influenced by my dad on a daily basis and my grandfather’s great love of stories after that. Writing was a different story…
I was a terrible sleeper from day one! This drove my parents a little more than nuts. I would be put to bed and think I was missing out on what was going on in the living room while I was stuck in bed. This was 1972-1973, and I distinctly remember hearing the music from MASH and the news and then my parents would eventually make their way past my room down the hall and go to bed. I was always still up!
I won the battle of bedtime early on (or they gave up hope that I’d learn to sleep) and we made an agreement that I was allowed to stay up as long as I stayed on my bed and only got up to go to the bathroom or get a new book off my book shelf. I ended up being able to read on my own by the time I turned four or so.
I was read to a lot by mostly my father and grandfather. I remember my nighttime routine as a three year old was three card games of go-fish with dad and then a couple books and lights out (or at least lights out was supposed to happen…lol).
When my grandparents visited, or I visited them, my grandpa read to me for hours! He was living in Hawaii at that time, and got me all kinds of books on Hawaiian kids’ stories. I learned about the fish, volacanoes in addition to a whole host of topics about animals, birds, places, etc. I still treasure these books! He also read to me from an astronomy book that I loved, as well as telling me fascinating stories about Hawaiian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman gods. I loved the god stories the best, probably because they were so magical! (A short story about my grandfather, that contains a passage he wrote about his beloved Greek Gods: