Rug-Rat Reader

It is time to embarrass my daughter, Ann, with a few words specifically about her; about the days when she was still in diapers and discovered books.

After a day at work, and a quick run at Stone Mountain, I liked to sit down in an easy chair and relax reading the newspaper before dinner. I would have liked that, but it never happened. My sitting in the chair was Ann’s signal to hunt through the toys on the floor for a book. She would come toddling over to the chair with a book giving me the two arms “up” gesture. I didn’t pick her up. I made her climb up.

It just seemed the right thing to do; to make the easy things hard; to make the kids overcome as many obstacles as possible. The goal was to make them self-sufficient adults. Making life easy doesn’t teach them anything. At each stage of their childhood we allowed them to do as much for themselves as they could possibly handle.

I stuck my legs out and patted them with my hand saying, “climb up”. And so it was that she would grab little fistfuls of my pants, or while wearing shorts in the summer, fistfuls of leg hairs and flesh, and proceeded to commando climb up my body. I would attempt to ignore the climb and get another newspaper paragraph read, but it was difficult to do with her fingernails digging into my soft tissue.

When she reached my lap she continued to climb up my chest by grabbing handfuls of t-shirt or whatever else was handy until she was face to face with me, making my own reading impossible. (All of my t-shirts were eventually stretched out of shape and ruined by Ann’s brutal climbs.) When Ann reached my face, and all too often grabbed a handful of that during the climb, she would turn around and plop herself down with great vigor on my most tender and prized possession. Ouch. Just to be difficult I would continue to try to read the newspaper, but she would slap the newspaper down and shove her book in my face. “Read”, she commanded. It was one of her first words. (“No”, was first.)

As commanded, I would read the book with all appropriate enthusiasm and sound effects. Sometimes I would attempt to turn multiple pages to get through with the chore and back to the newspaper, but she had every book memorized and would turn back to the missed page. As her reading progressed I intentionally misread words or pointed to the wrong objects so she could correct me. It was great fun, if the process was not repeated endlessly hour after hour, and day after day.

When the book was done I placed it on the floor next to the chair and pronounced it “all done”. Ann would then climb down my body in the same fashion she came up, find another book, and repeat the process all over again.

It wasn’t long before Ann was reading the books to me. We kept a large collection on hand. If we were going to be forced to read, or listen to reading, for hours, the least we could do for our own sanity was to provide some variety. It was also nice to have a book with a plot, and dialogue, so the books became increasingly more interesting and difficult.

We weren’t trying to get Ann ahead of other children in preparation for her first day at school; there was simply no way to hold her back. Ann liked to read, and reading was the doorway to knowledge. Whodathunkit?

Ann went to kindergarten and first grade at Stone Mountain Elementary School. They tested her reading ability and found she was reading at the 5th grade level. She was so far ahead of the other kids they did not know what to do with her. The teachers ended up sending Ann to the Principal’s Office during the reading period each day. At the Principal’s Office Ann would read books out-loud to the Principal and the secretaries.

Though I complain about Ann pestering us with reading books as a pre-schooler, it really was fun.

In retrospect, it was all fun.