At my usual bedtime, 8:00 PM, I would not go to sleep; I would stay up reading as long as I could keep my eyelids open. When my parents would come and check on me, they would tell me to turn off my light and go to sleep, but after they left again, I would just continue to read. After several times of insubordination my parents would get upset and take my lamp that was on my nightstand. I always found that peculiar and a bit contradicting. I would think, “How can someone get frustrated for doing something intellectual, like reading?” Often parents have to yell at their children to read, and mine were telling me to stop. Eventually my parents realized it was contradicting to hold me back from reading. I took that as an advantage, and I read books for hours. I would get little to no sleep, but it was was always completely worth it.
In the third grade, I read one of my favorite books, Matilda by Roald Dahl. I finished reading the 240 paged book in an examination room during a physical. I was ecstatic that someone