When I was growing up we were huge readers. We moved a lot because my father was in the military. And our first stop when we got to a town was to the local library. And we would go every week and we would check out books and we’d read those books, return them the next week, and that was a major pastime for us. And for me in particular it was something that I loved and that was really my constant friend and companion. These books were, you know, what I turned to. I wouldn’t know anybody in a town, but I could always go to the library and check out as many books as I wanted to.
So that was really what sustained me as a kid through all these moves. And, you know, I can remember my mother teaching me to read. You know, when I grew up, we didn’t go to preschool. You know, so you spent all those years at home with your mom and she was the one that, you know, went through everything with us. And I remember the first sentence that I read in this little children’s science textbook that said, “Mother, mother said Bob. I see a robin.” And sitting next to her and saying the sentence and feeling so accomplished and thinking the book was so difficult. So reading was a big, big part of my life.
