No not the most expensive, or the most needed, but one that you remember forever. For some I guess it was that bike they wanted when they were kids. Others, maybe it was the first car they got. Mine was a gift that I hated when I got it.
When you are a kid about the worst thing you can get is clothes (why do parents bother wrapping sox as a gift…if we need them put them in our drawer). While this wasn’t that bad it was probably a close second. I loved toys, airplanes, action figures or remote control anything. That Christmas when I opened that box of books, I thought, “books…I must have opened someone else’s gift.” I soon forgot them, pushed them to the side and continued to play with my new remote control whatever (see you forget those toys).
A few days later, after the newness of those shinny action figures wore off; my Dad sat down with me and asked me what I thought of the books. At this age I hated reading. Reading was something you were forced to do for a report at school or even worse a test. So I had not even really looked at the books…they sat in their boxes under the new clothes I got. So I asked my Dad what they were about. He proceeded to tell me that they were a series of books that he read when he was a kid. He loved them so much that he thought it was time to pass them down to me. He spent weeks trying to track them down through used bookstores (obviously no Amazon or Barnes & Noble then) and put together as much of the series as he could.
So more out of guilt than desire I thought I would at least pretend to read them. I sat where my Dad could see me and flipped through the first few pages of the first book of the Hornblower series. Well around page 10 things had changed. Suddenly I was interested in what would happen next. This was new for me – instead of being forced to read; I WANTED to. After that I was constantly reading. I was always looking for a new book. I read all my Dad’s old books until I caught up to him and soon we were fighting over new ones (“You can read it when I’m done,” “No YOU can read it when I’M done.”)
Nowadays anyone who knows me knows my appetite for books. I love to read. I love things that are well written. I even appreciate TV shows, songs and movies that I think have good writing. There is no better way to kill time while traveling or waiting in line. To me there is nothing better than sitting in my hammock, music on in the background, reading a new book by one of my favorite authors. Maybe it’s a little sentimental, but with my Dad’s Birthday and Father’s Day approaching I thought of this: I love to read…and I guess that was the best gift I ever got.
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