It may be apocryphal, but I've been told that I started reading when I was three. I know it sounds absurd, but, according to family legend, it's true.  I do know that at age five when I started Kindergarten, I skipped out on learning my letters and sounding out words to go read alone in the library or to join the third graders to do their reading lessons. I have images of reciting entire books on the laps of adults who were either totally impressed or bored to tears.

 

It was magic when words were strung together to tell stories that transported me from a grandmother's lap to Whoville or Narnia. I was a fidgety, noisy, kid who interrupted everything my parents did. They figured out that if I had a book in my hand, I could sit still and be quiet. I could be left alone for hours in front of the stereo, with huge, adult-sized over-the-ear headphones playing the Beach Boys' albums on repeat while I painted fences with Tom or fenced the baddies alongside D'Artagnan.

 

We now know that I have ADHD and my hyper-focus is reading. In the 1970s, I was just a pain in the ass whose parents got creative to keep him happy. I became a person who understood the whole world from my little room in a small, country town full of people who looked just like me. In the books I read, I went places I could never go. I met people I'd never get to meet in real life. I learned that people are just people regardless of their race or gender. I learned that you could have mental health issues, and still be a whole person. I learned that love is love and it is good, and war is war, and it is bad. Books gave me the world. They got into my heart and soul and gave me lifelong friends.

 

I went into 7th grade having already read all of the required reading for the year and instead of making me read it all again, my teacher encouraged me to write some fiction. I wrote a play, created comic books, and wrote some short stories. It was all bad, but the bug bit me and at age 12, I became a writer.

 

Now, nearly 40 years later, I am still a writer. My teacher saw a kid who found himself in stories and she hoped that one day, people would pick up something I wrote and would find themselves. I write because I want to be that person for other noisy, dream-filled, pain in the asses out there.  Maybe, dear reader, you are one of them. For more essays and thoughts about the world of words, subscribe to my newsletter.