TheBanyanTree: Reading

[Mike Pingleton]

That is a great complement to you, Dale, and a testament as to how much
little things can mean to a child.

I attended summer school in 1965 and our teacher read The Hobbit out loud to
us over several weeks.  Thinking about it, back then The Hobbit was probably
avant-garde, edgy stuff to read to seven and eight year olds.

And I read it to my own kids in hopes that it might capture them the way it
did me.
-Mike

On Sat, Oct 22, 2011 at 11:34 PM, Dale M. Parish <parishdm at att.net> wrote:

> 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
>
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