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My life expanded when I was introduced to the magic of words on paper. I was thrilled when I learned to decipher those Run, Tip, Run books. I was transported when I moved between the stacks of books of the local library while searching for my weekly selection of books. Sometimes I could not wait and sat on the wooden library floor leaning against a bookshelf, mesmerized by the first few pages of A Wrinkle in Time or The Black Stallion.
At breakfast, I read the backs of cereal boxes. I did have a life outside of books, actually quite a busy life, and yes, I also watched television and went to movies. However, I know my life would have been diminished if I couldn't have read those many words. I still have a busy life, but my love affair with the written word continues. My home is filled with magazines such as Harper's, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, and books. Library books, books from second-hand book stores, and books from the bookstore after just popping in for a browse. So much to read, so little time. A particular Twilight Zone has burrowed into my brain. I don't think I will forget it. The book-loving character wearing thick glasses played by Burgess Meredith is the lone survivor of a cataclysmic disaster. After walking through his demolished city, he is ecstatic to find the library intact and realizes he has this expanse of time stretching before him. No job, nothing to interfere with his reading time. At the show's end, he accidentally breaks his glasses and I still shudder when I think of that moment. In fact it filled me with despair when I was young so I rewrote the ending. Out of one of the crumbled buildings another survivor staggers out - an optometrist. I love to read. I am a bookworm. Sometimes I feel I need to explain myself. No, I haven't withdrawn from life. My life isn't entirely made up of the created life in books, just as it isn't entirely made up of life in cyberspace or in the small routines of my physical world. It is balanced. But, I believe that I would be less of a person if I could not read. As a child and young teen, I would have known so much less of the world and people if I had only to rely on my experiences growing up on a wheat farm in western Kansas.
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