Saturday 24 June 2017

01.

So I was always THAT kid. The one who would go to the library and work at lunch, the one who would sit and read at playtime. My mum used to take me to the library after school where I would love the bookworm challenges, would fixate on filling my sticker book to the end, would race to pick up a book and read it the whole night under my covers…until I got told to sleep. Five times.

I loved books. I loved seeing a story in front of my eyes, it was like being in another world. I used to dream about the books I read, dreamt about the characters, being inside the very scene I had just read. I had one of those run away imaginations when I was young – I could finish a five hundred paged book in three days maximum. We used to pre-order every Harry Potter book before it came out, and me and my sister used to sit in silence, just reading.

We had these boxes at school, you know those ones that were plastic and where they have the colour dot and if you were that colour, those books were meant only for you? I was at the near empty box at the end, where there was only 10 books or so, barely touched, a little dusty… a little older than the rest. It was the box for the quick readers, the readers who needed a challenge (or the ones the teachers didn’t have to worry about.) I was so proud of myself being in that box, that reading time with mum was always the best time of the night. I had to finish the next book before anyone else. I had to be the best reader.

I was always surrounded by books; I was THAT kid.