Reading to my grandson

I can't claim to having been an early reader. I learned in school, not as some precocious toddler. My mother read to me all the time but rather than learning how to do it myself, I just memorized my favorite books. I didn't go to kindergarten because it wasn't mandatory when I was of age. I didn't get put into the smart kids reading group to start off with because I switched schools early into first grade. Once I got the fundamentals down, though, I wanted to read more than I wanted to eat. I was way into adulthood before I stopped carrying a book around with me everywhere.

I rushed through every assignment for years so that I could read whatever book I was interested in at the time. There are comments on my elementary school report cards about me neglecting other responsibilities to pursue what my teacher called "pleasure reading" an activity she complained that I put before everything else. My excessive reading bothered her so much that she would assign me dictionary pages to copy by hand just so she wouldn't have to look at me with my nose in a book. There were always books in our house. Both of my parents have been voracious readers my whole life. My siblings are also book people. So are my kids.

When I was growing up, my favorite of all the many towns we lived in was the one where we lived closest to the library. We spent so much time there and the staff got so fond of us that years after we moved, they called just to see how we were doing. We spent two summers in that little town and both years I won prizes for reading the most books for older elementary kids and my little sister won the prize for the younger grades. The money I made selling newspapers and recycling glass soda bottles went for books, including comic books. When we would make trips to the used books store in a larger town an hour away, I would agonize over which of my new books I would read first. I went to that same used book store for 40 years. My kids grew up going there and I even got a chance to take my grandchildren. It finally closed about five years ago, sadly.

I have pretty sizable bookshelves in my home. I've yet to read quite a few of the books I own, but that in no way will keep me from buying more. Amazon's recent decided to make it impossible for its customers to download the books they've bought after this month. I just had to go through the nearly 500 Kindle editions that Wonder Woman and I have accumulated since we started a joint account in 2012. We have about the same number of audiobooks, which totally count as reading in my estimation.

Since I can be a bit obsessive about things I like, I've read the complete works of several prolific authors, including Robert A Heinlein (32 books, 59 short stories) and Ed McBain (55 books in his 82nd Precinct series). The worst thing that ever happened to my reading habit was the Internet. It competes for my attention more than anything else ever has. It's just another form of reading, however. It's horrible for my attention span, but i resist the urge to go on frequent YouTube binges, preferring a steady mix of blogs, news and social media.

I carried books in my Army rucksack when I was in the service. I used to carry a book up in the guard tower of the prison I worked at when I was on third shift. When I hiked the Appalachian Trail, I gladly packed the extra weight of a Kindle Paperwhite and so did my wife. We agreed early in our marriage to never say anything to each other about buying books. That was a sacred promise and one we've kept. I believe that my love of reading and my constant desire to learn about all the many things that have interested me is what allowed me to be successful in life without a formal education. I could have made more dough with a degree of some sort, but not a lot more. Truth be told, a life reading whatever I wanted sounds more to my liking than having to read what some stuffy professor assigned me any way.

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We spend so much of our lives at our job, often more than we spend with our families. Somehow, it has become common in this country to place an impersonal distance between ourselves and the people we work with. Folks are quick to tell you that your co-workers are not your friends. I suppose the rationale for that is simple. People depend upon their jobs and can be expected to look out for themselves first and foremost in relation to employment. Although they may seem friendly and personable, given the chance to earn more money or to look good to management, coworkers can almost be expected to chuck you under a bus. Being loyal only to one's self seems to be expected. I think that's a horrible way to live, and I struggled with it all my working life.

In most jobs I had, I left the relationships behind when I moved on to the next opportunities. That is a good demonstration of the difference between friends and coworkers. Thankfully, there is an exception or two. On the job I held the longest (20 years), There are a couple of people I grew close to and with whom I stay in touch. I am about 15 years older than both of them. We hired them when they were pretty fresh out of school. I knew them before they were married, and I've watched them become fathers and move on in their careers.

Peyton came onboard as an intern, wearing a backwards baseball hat and his beloved Cheerios tee shirt. He had a degree in history from our state's flagship university in Chapel Hill, but his interest had turned to tech. He had a knack for figuring things out, and he was exceptionally polite. A very likable guy, it was easy to make him laugh, and I tried to do that at every opportunity. Coincidentally, he grew up living in the same house where I'd lived back in the 70s. He was relatively apolitical, and I harangued him for years with my left wing outlook on life, even taking him with me to organizing meetings out of town. When he and his first wife split up, and he was at a low point, I loaned him my spare bike and took him out riding. He fell in love with the sport and is still riding today. We even rode across the state together one year on a bike tour. He eventually moved on to other and better paying tech jobs, ending up working in higher ed. Now in his mid-40s, he recently became a father for the first time (to twins). He shares pictures of them with me and a few other folks constantly.

I'm friends with another former co-worker from that job because of his extreme open-mindedness. Jeremy grew up in the Pentecostal Holiness Church in a small town east of where I live. When I met him, he had very traditional conservative values. I more or less harassed him for years. Those were the days before I quit drinking and my personality, to put it mildly, was a bit abrasive. When I finally sobered up and started treating people more like I wanted to be treated, we became friends, talking at great length about religion and politics and actually listening to each other instead of trying to score points. He went through an examination of his faith that had little to do with me. He came out of it still a believer, but with a much less traditional outlook on life. Jeremy has a real knack for analyzing people, and I always respected the conclusions he came up with. He started his own business when he left our shared job, and it is still doing well. We strike up conversations at random times about random things. I have no doubt that we will never lose touch.

I hear many men say that as we get older, it becomes more difficult to make new friendships. That's true, I think. Holding on to the friends we do have should really be a high priority. I can think of few things more valuable.

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Many adamantly profess to hate labels when it comes to people. They argue that as complex, individualistic beings, our true nature can't be captured with conventional language. Well, of course it can't, but unfortunately, until we develop the ability to do Vulcan mind melds, we are going to have to use our words.

Most of my adult life, I've used the convenient crutch of describing myself by my job title, conflating what I did with who I was. It was an easy and convenient (and kind of lazy) way to self identify. Of course, there are numerous ways to label ourselves. We do it by our relationships. I get to be Mr. Wonder Woman quite a bit because my wee, shy, introverted wife attracts a lot of attention by virtue of a high-profile job and her athletic prowess. When I go visit my dad, despite being a grandfather myself, I get defined as being Johnny's boy, which kind of makes me feel like Tony Soprano.

As a retired person, I suppose I'll use that label from now on and let people make assumptions based on that, since most of them will be true. They will also make assumptions based on pale skin, gender and age and most of those assumptions will not be correct. I'm not a contrarian just to be one. I am, unfortunately it seems, a minority among white men my age. Most of my peers are conservatives whose actions demonstrate a belief that people of color, gays and women have gone too far, gotten too many privileges and no longer know their place. Some of them are willing to say that out loud. Others will deny supporting those beliefs while doing absolutely nothing to stand in the way of their enforcement.

It is neither lazy nor wrong to assign characteristics to groups of people as long as you keep the exceptions in mind. I make plenty of disparaging remarks about white people because, let's face it, we have a poor track record in many areas where I am keeping score. Conservatives disparage identity politics. It makes them angry when we stubbornly point out systemic racism, systemic homophobia, systemic sexism. Now that they've won the fifth-closest election in American history and labeled it a mandate (because the truth doesn't matter)l, they are doing their level best to erase any mention of Wounded Knee, Selma, and women's suffrage from school libraries.

Suffice, to say, for me, worrying about labels is not something I engage in. I'm not bothered by anyone's good faith attempt to describe a person or group of people in polite, conventional terms. And, certainly, if you are describing a group of obnoxious assholes, feel free to label them as such. If I don't think you can defend your assertion, I'll probably let you know.

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