Dear Fred

Wowie!  I was this year's old today when I found out that there are hundreds, thousands even,  of audiobooks posted to YouTube.  This sure sparks a lot of joy for me.

I love reading.  I LOVE someone reading out loud to me.  This happens rarely if hardly ever at all.  The last time I was read to was in the fifth grade, Mr. Dunn, my teacher, read the entire Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy one hour at a time for the whole school year.  Whenever I read these novels myself, I still hear Mr. Dunn's voicing the characters and I still pronounce the names and the odd languages the way he did.  When someone reads out loud to me, everything else in my life just vanishes away and I'm Bilbo trying to save his own life by playing the riddle game...or I'm tripping down the yellow brick road, or I'm colonizing another world.  Even poetry had me singing a Song of Myself.  It seems to make troubles sink into the back nether regions in my mind, and joy to just pop in my heart.

I truly wish I had someone read a book aloud to me on the regular, my own mum wouldn't when I was growing up, although I asked a few times.  She'd just say no, I don't have time...considering I was number 5 out of six kids, this was often the case I guess.  When I learned to read, I went at it with a vengeance.  I read all the books to myself, all the ones I wanted to be read to me; my favorites were read over and over.  I figured a grown up'ish kid like myself had grown out of the desire to be read aloud to, since I could just do it myself.  But, honestly...I still love it, and I think it not only is wonderful for me, but wowie....it's wonderful for all parties involved.  Reading aloud is empowering, I did it myself whenever my son asked me to.  You get to be the wizard, game master, DM, master architect, historian, and teacher - all rolled into one.

Yeah ☺