On one particularly cold Chanukah night, my sister and I waited in impatient anticipation for our gifts after singing
Mao Tzur along with our father. My mother came into the front room carrying my brother in one arm and our presents in the other. My present was small and suspiciously slim, and I knew right away something that small couldn’t be good.
I tore the colorful wrapping and lifted out a book with a picture of a lion in pajamas dragging a stuffed animal in one hand and holding his stomach with the other. I asked my mother to read it to me.
“This is for you,” She said cheerfully. “You’re going to read it!”
But she was wrong. I was not going to read it.
“I can’t.” I said. “I don’t want to read it. You read it to me.”
Sensing the weather shift ahead and ignoring it, my mother forged on in her ever upbeat way.
“No, this is for you and you are going to learn how to read with this book.”
The last thing I was ever going to do was read to myself. The second to last thing I was ever going to do was listen to what my mother told me. I threw the book across the room and threw myself into a fit on the floor. I spent an hour screaming and crying alone while my parents and sister went into the kitchen to enjoy latkes and seek refuge from my almost daily tantrum. The floor felt cold against my empty stomach, and I found myself walking into the kitchen.
“Oh good, you stopped crying. Would you like a latke and to read the book for us, maybe?”
“No.”
“Knowledge is power--what’s so bad about reading?”
“It’s not like we’ll stop reading to you if you know how to; you’ll just be able to do it on your own, too!”
“I’M NOT GOING TO READ!”
I knew what my parents were trying to do. I was no fool and I was not going to stand by and let it happen. Knowing how to read meant that they would never read to me again and it was about time I put my foot down.
“You are going to read.” I was told. “Go get the book and I’ll help you.”
I sat down at the kitchen table after letting everyone know that I wasn’t going to get the book and demanded a latke. Another fit later and I found myself somewhere near the top of the basement steps. My father sat next to me and handed me the book. It sat on my lap and I watched it burn the last bits of my umbilical cord.
“S.”
“Yes.”
“O.”
“Good.”
“Ssssoooo?”
“Excellent!”
I felt a tear start.
“This is an S. I?”
“Yup.”
The tear moved and I let it slide through my lids. I kept reading.
“Sssssssiiiiiiiiiiiii. C. K, right?”
“Yes, that’s a K.”
“Ck. Sssssiiiiiiiiick. Sick. So Sick!”
“Yay!” My father said. “Doesn’t that feel great? You just read the whole title!”
He leaned over to kiss me on my head and a second tear followed the first. I cried while reading most of
So Sick! that night. My stomach hurt from reading, and from knowing that I was never going to be read to again. But sure enough, my mother read to me before bed that night as promised.
I'm really bored with my writings.
Labels: tales from 932
The next image? Stoic.
And as for the last image, that one moved in slow waves.
Well, apparently the slower the images move for you, the better you are at dealing with stress. Amazing.
The next image? Stoic.
And as for the last image, that one moved in slow waves.
Well, apparently the slower the images move for you, the better you are at dealing with stress. Amazing.
