Pilcrow

Being of French-Canadian descent also means being raised Catholic. I grew up as a low-key Catholic. We went to Mass every Sunday, and generally made it to the other Holy Days of Obligation as well, but that was about the extent of it. I had my first confession in third grade, I believe, as part of catechism; however, my parents never went to confession and never suggested we should go. My earliest memory in connection with going to Mass is of deciding it was boring and wanting to stay home and watch cartoons or play with my toys; I remember kicking up a fuss about it more than once, and being pretty surly while at church. However, my church had a “folk Mass” with a group singing contemporary songs; they were actually pretty good, and that eventually caught my interest and made Mass bearable. My interest in playing guitar (which I never ended up learning) was spurred by seeing this group of musicians every week, although I realize now the one that really interested me was the electric bass—at the time they were all just guitars to me, but the bassist had the electric one while the other two were acoustic, and clearly the electric “guitar” was the cool one.

As I mentioned in topic #4, due to my need for speech therapy I did not go through the Catholic school system, while my older sister did through junior high and my younger did through elementary, so I didn’t have that sort of cultural acclimation either. We did all go to catechism (Sunday school) before Mass. Catechism was always pretty boring. It was also a little weird for me, as there were a couple kids I knew from my public elementary school but mostly it was kids I’d met in kindergarden who were still in the Catholic school system, and I felt disconnected from them. I got in a little trouble once as I looked in the desk I was sitting at, found a comic book of the movie Alien, and kept pulling it out to read it instead of paying attention. I also remember at least once dawdling so much on the way to the school, playing with the snowbanks on the side of the road, that my dad came by in the car (I can’t remember if he was specifically looking for me or just found me on his way to get doughnuts) and yelled at me.

For the older kids, catechism switched after fifth grade from Sunday mornings before Mass to Tuesday evenings. That, however, was also when I moved from the Cub Scout troop to Boy Scouts, and my local Boy Scout troop met on Tuesday evenings as well. My parents said I’d be going to catechism, I insisted no, I wanted to go to Boy Scouts, and that was it: they didn’t fight about it, I went to Boy Scouts. I had no further religious education until tenth or eleventh grade, when it was time to start preparing for confirmation; fortunately those classes were on a different night. My standout memory from confirmation classes is of going on an overnight retreat where, once again, I was with a bunch of kids I didn’t really know—there were two retreat nights, and all my high school friends were put in the other group on the other night—and I mostly stayed by myself. In due course I was confirmed, and I did feel good about it, it was something I felt I should do, but I didn’t actually have any greater interest in my faith and religion than before.

I’m pressed for time so I’m going to call that a full entry—it is over 600 words and nearly an hour of thinking and writing—and save my thoughts on being an adult and Catholic for another topic.

I know for a fact that one of my earliest memories dates back to the summer I was three, and I believe a few others date back about that far too. So when I say that I cannot remember a time when I could not read, I mean that reading is that fundamental a part of my identity; prior to that, I was a toddler with a toddler’s very limited sense of self. My parents have said that I taught myself how to read, but in fairness they did read stories to us and I also watched a lot of Sesame Street, so it’s not like I had no help.

Another one of my early memories, I believe from when I was four, is of being at my friend’s house across the street and his parents asking me to read “This Is the House That Jack Built,” to demonstrate my reading ability. I remember them making a fuss about it, being all amazed and having me show off for some other grownups. I also remember on the one hand being pleased of course that they were praising me for it, and on the other hand not really understanding what the fuss was about: of course I could read, why wouldn’t I be able to.

In first grade, we spent a good amount of class time learning the alphabet, using The Letter People program. I didn’t mind, because I enjoyed the characters and stories, but I didn’t actually learn anything new from it either. Also in first grade, on our first trip to the library, after the librarian read a story to us, we were directed toward a shelf or two to pick out a book to borrow. I don’t remember what I borrowed that time—it may have been a Richard Scarry book, I loved those—but I do remember Mom being slightly displeased about the selection. She sent me back with a note for the librarian asking that I be allowed to select books for a higher reading level; the librarian had me read a page or two from some book and explain what I’d just read to demonstrate my understanding, and then I was allowed to select from books up to the third grade shelves. Sometimes I still brought home a Richard Scarry book, but I definitely took advantage of the wider reading available. By third grade I had the run of the whole library; I probably wasn’t the only student allowed to do that, but I’m sure not many were.

I’m also the only person I know who ever got in trouble for reading too much in school. Routinely I’d be caught not paying attention in class because I’d already read the chapter we were supposed to be reading through and discussing, and instead I’d be reading ahead further in the book, or maybe reading some other book entirely. My teachers didn’t discourage me from reading as such, they just strongly encouraged that I pay attention in class and participate.

Up until college, I read voraciously; I’d always have some book going and generally have one along with me wherever I went. Once I was old enough to know not to follow strangers, my parents could safely leave me in a bookstore while they did other shopping, because they knew I’d still be there when they got back. We had the 1976 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia, and I read through it… multiple times.* I didn’t actually read every article, of course, but I did enjoy browsing through it and absorbed a lot. I’d read pretty much anything. I developed a love of Greek mythology at an early age, and by fifth grade I’d dug up my mom’s copies of W.H.D. Rouse’s prose translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey, which she’d read in college, and read them. I also loved fairy tales and fantasy. I remember in fourth grade seeing a copy of Tolkien’s The Two Towers at my cousins’ summer cottage, my slightly older cousins claiming it was too hard to read, and thinking that I bet I could understand it; I didn’t read it then, but it must’ve been not much more than a year later that I plowed through The Lord of the Rings.

Not surprisingly, I ended up majoring in Literature in college. However, college is where I finally met my match: so… much… reading! It was very hard to keep up; indeed, by senior year I was simply failing to get all my reading done for all my classes. Usually I’d try to catch up later, but there was more than one novel that I simply never read, and naturally failed those exam essays. I did have decent grades overall and earned my bachelor’s degree, but that pretty much broke me.

Since then, I’ve read much less than I used to. Of course I’ve had more demands on my time and more interests to pursue, but I’ve also had less interest in seeking out new books to read. That said, reading is still both one of my greatest strengths and one of my greatest weaknesses. If ever I want a distraction from something I’m supposed to be doing, there’s always a book I can read or re-read. If I remember some favorite bit from a particular book I haven’t read in a while, it’s always dangerous for me to pull the book out just to read that bit, because invariably I will find myself up at 5 AM (which, yes, is very late even for me) having skimmed through the whole book yet again. The Internet, of course, is a huge distraction for me due to this weakness. However, my passion for reading and my ability to absorb a lot of information fairly quickly does help make me very good at my professional work as an editor, and also still serves me well for picking up odd bits of information that come in handy at odd times.

*I'm very amused to see in Wikipedia's article that apparently it's marketed for readers above 15 years old. I was probably half that when I started reading it regularly.

Saturday night during DJ Spooky's set, he dropped "Message in a Bottle" by the Police into the mix. He only played it through the first two verses and choruses and then extended the bridge as an outro, leaving out the final hopeful verse. It kind of broke my heart a little. However, it made me realize that I need to get in touch with my roots again, feel the ground beneath me. The Police is the very first band I fell in love with, just as I was becoming a teenager, and their music meant a lot to me all through high school, in the way that my slightly-younger friends fell for The Smiths. 

Back when Message In A Box: The Complete Recordings by The Police came out, I created cassette versions of the original albums from the CD set so that I could listen in my car or on my Walkman at work. I carefully chose which of their singles and b-sides to fill in the extra space on each cassette, and how to order them, either before or after the album itself. That gave me five albums plus an extra mix with the live tracks and leftover singles and b-sides, all on three cassettes. It was a labor of love, and I made sure to always have those cassettes available in the car or my carrying case. 

For years now my music collection has been growing, and since getting my iPod and then iTunes being released, I've shifted away from listening to whole albums to leaving my whole collection on shuffle song mode to take advantage of the variety. In the past few years I've added enough new music that I've been focusing on listening just to that in order to make it familiar. However, today (meaning Sunday) I re-created those custom Police album mixes as playlists in my iTunes library. I've been listening to each one straight through and singing along, and it's made me feel really good, and grounded or centered if you prefer. 

My high school 20th reunion is coming up in just under four weeks, the day after Thanksgiving. I've been looking forward to it for months, surprisingly eager to reconnect and catch up with old friends, a lot of which has been happening already on Facebook. A quick check on the definition of synchronicity suggests that it is particularly apt that this weekend I should've been reminded so strongly of my love for the Police and my need to get back to my roots and be grounded. I think I'm going to be listening to the music of The Police a lot over the next month.