Note: allergywoman has been "called away" by work this morning, and will note be able to respond to comments until 2PM aravir
"In the beginning was the Word..." -- The Bible
My parents have, generally, been fairly reliable when it comes to their memories of my early life. So I suppose I have to believe them when they say that no, I wasn't actually born with the ability to read.
I have a lot of early childhood memories, from about ages two to three years old. I remember my old crib I slept in (painted green), my stuffed animals that my dad used to put on shows for me as I woke up, my cereal (Cheerios with bran as I went to watch the Bozo show).
And reading. I remember reading T.A. for Tots and then running around like a maniac shouting something that the characters said...whoopee? Yippee? Something like that.
"There is a MONSTER at the end of this book!" -- Grover, The Monster at the End of This Book
According to my parents, I would follow them around, carrying my Little Golden books, pre-verbal, begging them to read them to me. So my mother hid them under a chair. When I found them, I would not only carry them around and beg Mom to read them to me, but I would put them back under there afterward, because that was clearly where they belonged.
Okay, if you say so, Mom.
But as far as I can tell, I not only have always been able to read, but have done so. Voraciously. Intensely. Going to the library and seeing my librarian, getting Debbie books, and then later Burgess animal books. Reading during meals. Reading at restaurants. Reading during study hall at school and when summer made school a thing of the past.
"Come greet me with kisses if you love me!" -- The very very creepy Flowers in the Attic
Oddly enough, I gained a tiny measure of social acceptance when, for whatever reason, I picked up the V.C. Andrews popular book Flowers in the Attic and read it between my high school classes. That doesn't happen very often. Even now, normally the only reason anyone asks what I'm reading is if I laugh out loud while I read...and often they dismiss what I'm reading as not to their tastes. But for some reason, that book, while extraordinarily bad (and creepy), got a lot of popular good reaction. There were smiles, and approving looks, and "So you're reading Flowers in the Attic?"
"A rainbow hen, the type is poor, but the colors are enchanting." -- Caption for a picture in my budgie ownership pamphlet
More often than not, though, I got the whole "so you think you're so smart, huh?" reaction from the people around me. For, you know, reading. And having no real social skills. And reading. Reading so many books I can't even remember them all. Reading so many that I have even checked out the same book again, after having already read it, because I didn't remember I'd already done so.
Do you remember back to the days of spelling tests? Did anyone else out there occasionally "misspell" words because you read them in old books that used eccentric spellings? I did. I got "sulfur" wrong. Why? Because in my edition of the Count of Monte Christo, it was spelled "sulphur." Not that I remember that or anything.
"Facetiously." -- One of my favorite words, contains all the vowels in the English alphabet in the order in which they occur in said alphabet
It didn't matter where I was or what I was doing. In college, I got a local town library card and used it. I hated most required reading in school, but I usually did it or found a way around it (Richard Armour's parodies of the classics got me eight questions right on Silas Marner, by the way...out of twenty, so not that great, but better than zero).
So I can't pick just one. I could just have easily chosen the name "Bookwoman" on here as "Allergywoman." I don't have one favorite book, or even twenty favorite books. I have many of them. I love books. And as far back as I can remember, back before I owned even one bird...and he was named for Dr. Doolittle's parrot from the Hugh Lofting novels, Polynesia...back before I could add, back when I played in our mobile home hitch and pretended to sell tickets to people from it, back when I'd tell my parents, "I'll be Ernie and you be Bert. You start," I could read.
And I still do.