How to Live: Lesson 2

Books by Zeromusta via Flickr

    Every stressful event in my life has been survived because I was able to have my nose in a book. The week where I quit my job, signed the mortgage on our first home, moved, and started my new job, I read a book a day. My sister was visiting, and I vividly remember her sitting, bored, on a box in the middle of our empty living room as I said to her for the third or fourth time, "I just need a second to finish this chapter."
     It wasn't even a particularly good book, but it was the only way I could keep from freaking out about all the major life decisions I was in the midst of making.

     My mother, a librarian, gets credit for this survival strategy of mine. My childhood memories nearly all include a pile of books, acting out the plot of a book, or having imaginary conversations with the characters from my most recently read book. I (probably not so) secretly believed that my life would follow the same course as Anne of Green Gables' did, and found myself being attracted to the boys who tortured me with their disinterest and/or unavailability.

     Thanks to my mother, I can always make small talk with strangers (if I notice them over the top of the book I'm probably reading), I can survive even the absolute worst days at work (though it means bringing out the book over the lunch break), and I can attest to the fact that the book is always better than the movie.