You know there’s a calculator online where you can figure that out. It’s at the Star Trek Online Academy. As my dad would say, “ask your phone” so I did and there you have it.
When we were little kids, our dad would always tell us whenever we had any question to, “look it up.” Which in our house meant to make use of the very large, institutional Random House Dictionary or the set of Funk and Wagnalls encyclopedia that lined the extensive line of bookshelves in our living room. To this day, my siblings and I all have our own set of extensive bookshelves lining several rooms in each of our houses. We are book junkies.
One of our favorite activities on the sister text is for someone to say, “show me your bedside table,” and then everyone sends a picture of the stack of books they are currently reading.
My sisters and I have talked often about how glad we are that our mom read to us as kids. Ever since any of us could remember she would sit us down before bed and read at least one chapter and usually several, of whatever set of stories she was in love with at the time. Of course, we went all the way through the Little House series, The Hobbit and all of those, and every Roald Dahl book from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to the BFG.
It wasn’t until we were older that she told us that she and our dad would read to each other every night when they first got married. Back then we lived in a dugout in the middle of the Nevada desert where my dad and his brother had a ranch. There was no running water unless you consider the mile-long, one-inch pipe that ran from the hot springs into the clawfoot bathtub that sat under a big cottonwood tree in the yard, to be running water. Neither was there electricity. I still have an affinity for the smell of kerosene that my mom used for the lamps that allowed her to read to us.
We moved to Fallon when I was three and we always had bookshelves and rarely a TV. We were jealous of our friends when we got a little older and loved to go play at their house where we could watch Charlie’s Angels and Wonder Woman. Now we realize just how lucky we were.
One of the benefits of our literary upbringing has been the blessing of becoming writers. As a former teacher I know that good writers are made from good readers, and as comfortable as I am with my ability to string words together, each of my siblings has an innate, spectacular talent for writing. As Hemingway said of Beryl Markham, each in their own way puts me to shame.
So I pen this ditty in honor of parents who blessed their children with one of the most valuable of birthrights – a love for words. And while I play with my favorite medium, I’ll be right here…
…keeping you Posted.
Rach
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