The Magic of Books

I know that most people hate reading books, they just cannot find it enjoyable these days, particularly the younger generation. That made me a bit of a pariah with the other kids growing up. I started reading young, and until second grade disliked it, just like any other kid in my school. Then a guest teacher started coming in and reading to my class from a book called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I was hooked! But the teacher only came in once a week! I just could NOT wait that long to find out what would happen next, so for the first time in my life I asked my mom for a book. I must admit, the first time i tried to read it I got impatient and skipped to the unicorn scene... but my mom found out and made me start from the beginning, I'm very glad she did. The night i finished that book we had a small party. Within a month i had gotten my very own library card! I would get 5 or 6 books from the children's section at once and return them within a week, by the time i was 8 i was hooked on wizards and dragons and sword fights... I read through the whole children's section, reread my favorites dozens of times. I also had no friends outside of the librarians and the books. So Harry Potter and his friends, Nita and Kit from 'So you want to be a wizard' and other characters became me friends. I'd lead them on adventures to new worlds with strange creatures and dangers, and they always protected me and stayed by my side. I think I started writing down poetry and those adventures around 8 too... Though i'd tear them up afterwards, they were never as well written as the real thing.

There are days when I regret doing a lot of things... reading those books has never, and never will be among them. Without them i don't think I could have stayed sane when the few friends i ever made hurt me in various ways... I think that to a certain extent at least, I still trust books over people. Nita and Kit will always be there for me, Harry will always triumph over the bad guy, and evil will never truly win in them. Books cannot hurt me beyond a paper cut, they cannot abandon me unless I abandon them first, and even then, they will return unchanged if I want them back. People are trickier. I love my friends, my REAL friends, I just cannot expect them to stay the same, and that scares me, good thing I will always have books to hide from my fears.