I picked up my first Goosebumps book in second grade on a regular visit to the local library with my mom. I selected The Haunted Mask after being drawn to its horrifying cover of a child holding a snarling, green orc-like mask, drool oozing from sharp, crooked teeth. It felt grown-up and forbidden, and I eagerly retreated to my room to read it. A few hours later I remember emerging from my room proudly announcing to my mother that I had finished it and I was ready for another.

My mother responded in disbelief and concern, warning me that I’d harm my eyes. When I was in third grade, I remember my mother laughing that the nurse called her and asked her pointedly, “did you know that your son can’t see?” I’m still a nearsighted mess today, but I’m not about to tell my mother she was right.

The story of The Haunted Mask is nothing special; it’s about a child that acquires the titular veil from a spooky shop to scare her bullies on Halloween. The mask bonds to her flesh and eventually becomes her face, but it is ultimately removed with the power of love. Of course, at second grade, this was the greatest thing I had ever read.

(It could start here)

My mother, a stay-at-home mom for all my life, made frequent visits to the library. It feels like the whole time I knew her growing up, she had a James Patterson novel in her hands. I remember asking my father what books he liked, and he admitted he didn’t read books.

Didn’t read books? I couldn’t even comprehend someone depriving themselves of such splendors, but I was hit with a deep sadness when I realized he was telling the truth. His attention was usually rationed between home improvement & bow hunting magazines and falling asleep to the news. As far back as high school I remember trying to get him hooked on a book; I lent him my personal favorite, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintaince, after he bought his new Harley Davidson motorcycle, but he only got a few pages in before determining it wasn’t for him. To be fair, I feel exactly the same way about actually riding motorcycles, which to me seem like certain death wrapped in a romantic veneer of freedom and independence.

People can blame Twitter and point to shortened attention spans or more excellent television than anyone could consume, but I know that book sales are higher than ever, so I had to cast sweeping generalizations aside and just deal with the notion that I just might not be a reader anymore. [rework this paragraph]

Notes:
In sixth grade, it was a long-form assignment to keep a weekly correspondence going with my English teacher, Mrs. Legg. This was essentially a reading journal in a dedicated green notebook with a plastic spiral binding. Most of its entries were about A Series Of Unfortunate Events and various war-books-turned-movies and war-movies-turned books (Saving Private Ryan, Windtalkers, First Blood, Rambo). In talking about Saving Private Ryan, I remarked on the horrors of war, and the feeling that I would be wholly unable to consider opening fire on late teenagers and early twenty-somethings who just happened to have a different nationality. My teacher remarked that this would be the least of her worries, which struck me as unsettling at the time, but to be fair, I was the twelve-year-old boy devouring an endless stream of WWII or post-Vietnam War fiction.

In ninth grade I read The Selfish Gene, learned I was an atheist, and then read everything I could. The God Delusion, The End Of Faith, god Is Not Great, etc etc.

Then in college I slowed down. I read Zinn’s a history of the US (I need to re-find that at home). I’d re-read Zen or Dorian Gray once a year or so, then volunteered to be a reader for the mins. Then after college I stopped, except for a UX book here or there for work.

Then I started with Comic books. THen Sedaris. A little Gaiman, but not a lot. Then a book on Kennedy.

I could carve this up into a couple of stories, like the sixth grade one about the reading journal. Or first grade and “I’d rather read,” but stuff like “Real-Life Monsters,” which I kept wondering if the guy presenting would bring up. Ms. Wessenger saying, “Did you know they were coming in today?” My friends went on the computer and made stamps of aliens or humanoid shapes and pasted them around making a weird artistic mess over canvas.