TheBanyanTree: Reading

[Indiglow]

What a wonderful story!  Thanks for sharing it.
Jana

--- On Sat, 10/22/11, Dale M. Parish <parishdm at att.net> wrote:


From: Dale M. Parish <parishdm at att.net>
Subject: TheBanyanTree: Reading
To: "Tree Banyan" <thebanyantree at remsset.com>
Date: Saturday, October 22, 2011, 9:34 PM


I got paid a pretty good compliment today by my youngest.  He called to say that he was coming back to Orange County from Houston, and wanted to meet me so I could calligraph an inscription in a book for him.  When he was still living in Beaumont, we used to meet at the barber shop every four weeks and take turns buying the haircuts.  I agreed to meet him at the barbershop, and then we came back here to inscribe the book.  

He had a leather-bound copy of _The Hobbit_, which he said had become his habit to give to the first born child of each of his friends.  He said, "Daddy, I still remember all the nights you read to us.  I want to my friends to do that for their kids..."  

The rule used to be, when they were still in single digit ages, that if they were *both* ready for bead at 20:30, in their beds--that I'd read to them for 30 minutes.  If either or both of them were not ready for bed-- bath, clothes in the clothes hamper, teeth brushed, room  picked up-- then they forfeited the reading for the night.  They didn't often forfeit.

Over the years, we read most of the classics-- Alice In Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, The Hobbit, Where The Sidewalk Ends, The Light In The Attic, Best Loved Poems of the American People, etc.  I asked him if he remembered squealing on Joe, his older brother.  He'd forgotten about that.  I know Joe remembers-- I've teased him about it.  

When I'd finish one night's reading, I'd memorize the page number-- Zeigarnik effect-- and pick up the next night.  One night, during Through The Looking Glass, I opened the book to the page on which I'd ended the night before and started reading, but Luke interrupted me with, "We've already read that part, Daddy."  I knew we hadn't and kept reading, but noticed his older brother Joe staring to squirm.  I kept reading, but Luke kept insisting that we'd alreday read that part, and the more he insisted, the more Joe squirmed. When I insisted that I had not read that part, then Luke exclaimed, "Oh!  That's the part that Joe read with the flashlight last night after you went downstairs!"  

The cat was out of the bag.  I couldn't very well chastise Joe for reading to his little brother, and as many times as I'd read under the covers as a child, I had to hold my snickers till I was downstairs again and could share the story with my wife.  

But today I felt paid off.  Sometimes you wonder about a lot of the things you did both for and to your kids.  It works out in the end. 

Hugs,
Dale
--
Dale M. Parish
628 Parish RD
Orange TX 77632