first book.

Do you remember your first book? Do you remember the feeling of the binding in your hands and the smell of the pages?



Well...

Books are metamorphic. You can revisit a book that you have read a hundred times, and the hundred and first time that your eyes scan the words – they change. I was curious. After fourteen years I was curious about a book that I found in the youth section all that time ago.

We had a tradition in my family – in order to get the privilege of having a library card, we had to first read a book, cover to cover, to our mom. I went to the brick colored building downtown, walked to the eye-level shelfs and grabbed the one. It was called “Bored Nothing to Do,” and it had an airplane on the front – I was instantly hooked. I sat down with my mom at home and read slowly over each word, each sentence, translating the print into imagination as two boys built an airplane from common household items.

As far as I was concerned, the words had a performative effect on me. When the two boys became bored with all their toys, so did I; when they were scared that their dad would catch them pulling the engine and gas tank out of his VW beetle, I was scared too. I was completely empathetic as my mind rose to meet their makeshift plane – our mom, I mean their mom, yelled at us to come down. What a kill joy.

The morning was warmer than the weather report predicted it being. I was on a mission and jumped out of the car as my mom yelled a question about needing a ride home. I shook my head and told her I would walk. The brick building smelled the same, it looked the same, my legs almost shrunk as I waited for the automatic door to open. This time however, I was tall enough to reach the computer. I searched for the book in question. In my experience, public library computer searches never work right. I began to sweat. I had one last chance with the lady at the youth reference desk. She looked busy. I swallowed hard and choked back my childish pride to find it on my own. Hi, I said. She looked up at me. I'm looking for a book I told her. She can't find it.

I made some comment about nostalgia and sulked my way upstairs. When I was small, the spiral stairs led to another realm. The upper tiers were reserved for the reading elite and “Bored Nothing to Do” was surely on the first floor. There was a point, a vague shift, where I threw off the robe of the short stacks and climbed the slowly spiraling center piece to the monstrous collection of fiction and computer manuals.

My feet crowned the top stair and I suddenly found myself among the clone shelves of literature. I passed the “H”s – then the “I”s – my stride began to slow without any intervention on my part. I hit the “J”s. By now I was scanning the bindings searching – searching – searching – Joyce! I pull a thick book from a sandwich of Dubliners – in scripted letters the cover read Finnegans Wake. Holding it tightly I walked to the far back corner, far from the other library patrons, where the sun poured in from the south, warming a fake plastic plant.

The story continues.
I bask in the literate tradition.