All my life, I’ve been a bookworm. My sister was two years older and always passed along any good books assigned in school, so I was always at least two years ahead in reading level. I used to smack into lampposts and trip over things because I always had my nose stuck in a book.
I wasn’t always reading Shakespeare, mind you. (In fact, I’ve read shamefully little Shakespeare, something I really will have to remedy some day.) No, I got my start with Garfield comics. My poor family — I can’t even begin to guess how many comics I “recited” to them, describing what happened in each panel complete with exact dialogue.
There are certainly a number of advantages to being a bookworm. My grammar is acceptably decent, even though I never studied grammatical rules. I can’t diagram a sentence to save my life and I’ve no idea what the present progressive is unless I translate the meaning from Spanish, yet I’ve corrected mistakes made by lawyers at Ye Olde Financial Company.
The best part of being a book-lover is that you’re rarely bored. I don’t mind eating a meal by myself, in a restaurant or at home; a book is company enough. I can tolerate long waits at the car shop if I’ve got my nose buried in a book. I have a friend whose brother, while college touring, packed his X-BOX to hook up to the hotel TVs; what else was he going to do at night?
And now that I have a Kindle, I’m even more in love with reading. It fits nicely onto the shelf of the elliptical machine at the gym so I can read during my morning workout; it gets whipped out when the line at the fish counter at Shaw’s is moving very slowly; it makes the glacial pace of the post office tolerable.
At any time, in any place, I can sit down and be happily absorbed in a book.
And that’s one of my problems.
There are some people who are frenetically busy and jittery, who clean constantly. There are some people who just don’t feel comfortable if the area around them is untidy. There are some people who clean when they get bored, who vacuum and dust as a means of alleviating ennui.
Why can’t I be one of those people?
Hell, I had a friend back in high school who, when given a bit too much of the party refreshments, would feel a desperate need to CLEAN. (That was awesome for the rest of us, by the way.)
I read someone like Their Wicked Stepmother, who wakes and has coffee, a load of laundry and breakfast before I’m usually awake in the morning, and I’m in awe. Lyn insists she’s not a neat freak; that “My general rule is: vacuum twice a week, mop once a week, bathrooms scrubbed once a week. Everything else as needed.” (Crap. When was the last time I vacuumed the bedroom?) Meanwhile, I just want to curl up on the couch with my cat, my husband, a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, and my Kindle.
Obviously, part of becoming a responsible adult is learning to balance what you want with what you need to do. Furthermore, I’ve no doubt that when human kittens (eventually) join our family, my leisurely book reading will become a thing of the past as I struggle with diaper rash (Milk of Magnesia works!), bodily fluid expulsions and the sixth sense that tells small children EXACTLY when you’re either eating or resting. (I helped raise two younger brothers. I pretty much know what we’re in for.)
I know a lot of my readers are bookworms as well. Tell me, y’all — how do you balance your household chores with your desire to gobble down books? Got any tips for me? (I hope the answer is not books on tape. I’ve only listened to a snippet of one, once, and I wanted to gouge out my eardrums.)
