Tantalizing Past Torture

I love to read. It's seems to me after recent conversations that it's amazing that this hobby even survived against the challenges that were placed against it. Required reading in school, my definite problems with reading out loud when I was younger, and then the death blow . . . Choose Your Own Adventure books.

I could read any book for pleasure as long as it was not required reading. I enjoyed reading the "Lord of the Flies" when I was 10 years old. I read it just because I wanted to. I did find enjoyment in some summer reading assigments such as "A Walk Across America", "Black Like Me", "Death Be Not Proud", and "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman". Finally, one year my dad suggested that I read "The Hobbit". I immediately fell in love with Fantasy books and that is all I read now.

There is one type of book that always tripped me up as a child. Those darn Choose Your Own Adventure Books. You all remember them. You read a few pages and then based on whatever the adventure is it will say "to go down the beach, turn to page 12; or to follow the Pirates into the cave, turn to page 127". I always died. It was always "The Pirates see you and kill you" and then I would flip back and choose page 12 and then you would read for 5 or 6 pages at which point you would have to choose again and I would inevitably die again and have to flip back and sometimes I would not die for a few choices and would flip back and realize the second choice ALSO led to death. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?!?

I never made it to the end of one of these books. Poor sweet Michael (my honey) said that these books are probably the reason why he doesn't really read for enjoyment. They didn't ruin it for me. I became more determined with every failure. My friend Nick asked me how many of these books did I attempt to read. I replied "oh, about a dozen". That's pretty ridiculous. I should never have bought that many of these stupid books.

But the really crazy thing is that just talking about all this failure and about how frustrating these books are makes me want to go out and buy one and try them again. I just KNOW I can make it to the end. At least, I THINK I can.

Thank God life isn't like these books.

choose that elevator: you die
eat that potato chip: you die
follow your boss around the corner: he spills his coffee and you slip and fall in it and have to file for Workman's Comp but they won't pay because you weren't working at the time you fell down - whew! at least I didn't die!