Over the years, my interest and awareness regarding reading and writing have varied from time to time. I remember my mother reading bedtime stories to me as a child and actually painting my personal pictures to what she was saying. Once I was old enough to read the stories myself, I would go back and compare my mental pictures with those that were in the book. During my elementary days, I found the novice level of reading and writing to still be interesting. Everything from transferring imaginary stories I had thought of onto a sheet of paper to tell the entire class about my church league team winning the basketball championship the previous Saturday, I thoroughly enjoyed writing and felt I had a personal connection to it. There were a stack of old books in the corner of my school library that caught my attention due to bold book cover. I picked the book up and read The Hardy Boys, The Tower Treasure. It was something about the cover that stuck with me. Before I even opened the book, the fact that the two boys on the cover seem like they were close to my age gave me some added interest in the book. I became a huge fan of the book series after I read that first book, and was the only books I really read around this time. For some reason, the articles in sports magazine kept my attention more than books that were considered appropriate for my age. Due to my Father’s excessive interest in sports, I was able to grasp on to the vocabulary associated with most sports at a younger age than most.
I feel my desire and interest in writing grew dim once I reached middle school and had to write about stories and novels I did not find interesting, causing me not to actively read these books in the first place. That feeling of being distant from the material covered in my middle school classes carried over into high school and it did not help that I had the same strict English teacher for all four years of high school. Mrs.