Ruining Reading

My nephew is only 3, and ever since he was a baby, he has devoured books.  Every book is fascinating, and if it's fascinating enough, you will read it over.  And over.  And over.  To the point where some books get hidden under a couch or a table because there are only so many times you, as an adult, can read the same twenty-seven words before you want to strangle children's authors and their effective repetition.

A favorite of my nephew's.

At least the kid has taste.

I miss that.

I had a professor in college who taught  my writing courses, and he would always say that what college prevented was reading.  It seems asinine, considering there were days I would read 60-150 pages, just for one class on one night.  But, God, it's true.

As soon as I could, I began devouring books.  I was my nephew, and it didn't stop in junior high, like it does for so many kids.  I LOVE books.  When everyone asked what I would do after graduation, "read for fun" was at the top of the list.  But college has turned me into such a skimmer.  If you've been to college, you've been there; you search the article for words that stick out because of length or font or stylization or bullet points, you read the first and last sentences of paragraphs to pick up on main points, you look for the places with howevers and even sos and thus or in conclusion because, quite frankly, there aren't always enough hours in the day.

The thing about skimming is that once you start, you can't stop.  I know I'm horrible about it.  The professor in my Contemporary Drama class gave quizzes on things that were written in the stage directions, not the dialogue, and damn if I didn't miss half of those questions pretty much every time.  Reading novels, I catch myself skipping from dialogue to dialogue and missing important details like entrances, exits, and secret revelations (side note: some authors like Louise Erdrich [whom I have met] don't necessarily use quotation marks in their novels, and boy does it drive my brain wonky).  As a writer, I know how agonizing finding the right word can be, how the rhythm and flow of prose create or destroy a passage, and yet I cannot make my brain savor the words on the page.  It is the voracious, cannot-put-it-down feeling of being enraptured by a wordsmith that I miss.

The missing is a reminder to slow down.

I live life as fast as I can, cramming, multi-tasking, doing and going and making, trying to fit every experience into one day - trying to make room for everything, and instead, gaining nothing.  Numbness and apathy are the symptoms, not the disease, and the symptoms point to a surface-level skimming of life.

It's time to feel.  It's time to savor.