As a boy, one of the first books I read was a science fiction short story collection, No Way Out. The collection introduced me to terms like “eater of worlds,” a phrase I hadn’t heard of ever in my nine years of life when I read it. I learned about time machines, early humans, and so much more in that short story. It was a gateway to worlds beyond my comprehension and knowledge at the time. And it all came about because I was stuck at home with a cold and fever. I begged my Dad to get me something to read.

Comic Books

An avid reader of comic books, I loved anything in English and Spanish. I read everything since I was bilingual/biliterate, and I spent many an hour at the Post Exchange (PX) reading comic books with an Oh Henry bar and Snickers bar in my hand, ready to buy. Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Superman, Batman, the Fantastic Four, I read them all.

Every time I visited, I would take a two or three comic books home with me, but the vast majority, I read sitting in front of the comic book rack, adults and other humans walking around me on the floor. I still remember what the comic book version of Ultron looked like, and it’s amazing how close the Marvel movies came to capturing the comics I read in the 1970s, clutching my favorite candy bars.

It’s the same pose I would take at school libraries later, when we moved from Canal Zone, the Republic of Panama, to San Antonio, Texas, USA.

Growing Up Catholic

Growing up attending Catholic school from first grade, as I’d walked out of my Kindergarten class in public school because I didn’t like sitting on the floor and getting my clothes dirty (my Mother had strict rules and she didn’t have anyone to blame but herself when I walked home from Los Rios Elementary school in the Canal Zone), I found myself reading anything and everything I could get my hands on. In Panama, I visited the library at the top of the metal stairs, and the sad basset hound poster stuck in my head.

The hound said, “Now that I know all the answers, no one asks me the questions.”

My voracious reading soon expanded beyond the non-fiction, fiction books in the Holy Spirit Catholic School library, where Ms. Hayes presided, to anything I could get my hands-on at book stores like the now defunct Guthrie’s Book Store., B Dalton, Waldenbooks, and others. 

Hot Stuff

I still remember the time I got my hands on a werewolf tale, where one of the werewolves was named Serena, and relied on her wiles to hook a victim, which she turned. Wow, what a steamy read. I had never read a book like that, with elements of human sexuality so blatant. It was heady reading for a middle schooler, and introduced me to new vocabulary and more. I have to admit, though, that the only thing I cared for was the werewolves rampant violence through a small town. Now, it’s more rampant sex in all those werewolf and vampire tales…ruined the story, I say. The sex stuff? Meh, who cares? That was my thinking then, and to be honest, reading smut isn’t that exciting.

The older I got, the more I read. The real shift was when I started visiting the San Antonio Public Library. It was a long trip from my home in NorthEast San Antonio, so, I found myself getting a paperbag of books, a far-ranging collection of science fiction, fantasy, and Westerns, with an occasional spy thriller thrown in (boring, I don’t care if it was James Bond). 

Source:Karl Edward Wagner‘s Kane, Hollywood Reporter This was one of most gripping stories I read when a kid. Of course, Howard’s Conan, John Carter of Mars, and so many other books captured my interest, including Jack London, Louis L’Amour, and so many others. You are what you read, but I’m no muscle-bound hero…or at least, only in my dreams. But I learned something from these stories…stories that no preacher would have allowed in a library.

I’d consume those books in record time. I didn’t notice it, but the avid reading paid off in school. I could write anything the teacher wanted me to write in record time. That only got better as I went from middle school to high school to college. 

Power of Reading

You have to understand, I read many of these books in middle school, including Robert Ludlum. I had no shortage of wild tales to draw upon when it came to write a short essay on XYZ topic for school.

When it came my turn to raise up my children, I encouraged them to read anything and everything. I’d realized the benefits of historical fiction, a la Dana Fuller Ross’ Wagon West series, and knew that the fiction would provide a framework they could hang facts taught in school on. What I didn’t anticipate is my children’s reading of adult situations in fifth grade (of course, I’d done the same in sixth grade with Serena’s werewolf), but it gave them an edge.

I wouldn’t stop children from reading books, whether they were fantasies, sci-fi, westerns, etc. Even Robert Ludlum’s The Materese Circle, with two spies from opposite countries, had adult situations. All of that formed me and made me who I am in some way, gave me insights into adult behavior. Whether I’ve taken advantage of them all, I’m not sure. But I do know that I wouldn’t blind children to more heady historical texts, or texts that have them reading about all sorts of topics a Sunday preacher would blush at.

That’s why I oppose book bans and the crazy proclamations of preachers and their brainwashed crowds. Humans are smart enough to keep what they read, and who they choose to be, separate when necessary. At least, if they have any critical thinking skills.

The more we limit children reading, the more we dumb them down to what’s in the world. I can tell you there were many books I thought, “Gross, this is disgusting” and I’d throw them away. I was old enough at middle school to make the choice, if not younger, and I did.

In Love with Words

One of the top 20 books I read in sixth grade included the Bible. I’d always had one handy growing up Catholic. In fact, I had a collection…I’ve let most of them go now, keeping only a my favorite print copies. 

My favorite books were Proverbs, Psalms, and Book of Sirach (a.k.a. Ecclesiasticus but not to be confused with Ecclesiastes, the “time to live, time to die” book of the Bible that is entertaining in its own way, too). And, I did take the time to compare the beliefs and values of characters in the books I read to my own values and beliefs.

It was through compare-n-contrast that I came to better understand my own beliefs and hold them tighter to my heart. You’d think by now that book banners would have figured out that banning something, forbidding people something, only stimulates them to seek it out.

As a book of stories, the Bible is replete with them. If you can use your imagination, you’ll find yourself awash in blood, mayhem, and everything else human beings relish. I can  no more imagine banning the bible for its violence and sex than I could a book by an LGBTQ+ author writing about their experience in finding themselves and their relationship with others, including God.

 We are doing our children a dis-service when we ban books because the ideas in them make us uncomfortable. As if reading about women being abused, people enslaved, is something we should hide from them. No, let’s encourage them to read that, to find out what the truth looks like from different corners, and find a way to better understand the world.

Now, I can’t imagine NOT reading. I still read voraciously. I can’t imagine a world where people are afraid to read because it might expose them to ideas that fly in the face of their values. Cowards.

God wasn’t a coward when he allowed people to be…why are we when we stop people from learning about the human condition? Whether you believe in God or not (and I’m sure he can handle it if you don’t), no one should be denied the right to read as they please, whatever they please. Raise your kid, answer questions honestly, you’ll soon find that they’ll learn to be people that help others and do well.

Treat them like weak-brained creatures, and sure enough, that’s what they’ll become.

As for me, I’ll keep reading whatever the heck I want. And, encouraging others to as well.