Cybercolumn by Berry D. Simpson: Reading habits and expanded horizons

Posted: 3/16/07

CYBER COLUMN:
Reading habits and expanded horizons

By Berry D. Simpson

I read books all the time. When I was a kid, we would go to the library once a week as a class, and I always checked out a book. I remember one year—I don’t remember which grade, I think fourth or fifth, or which teacher, Morris or Henry, but I can picture the layout of the library in my mind—the librarian telling us boys to stick to Boys Life magazine and stop looking at the pictures in Seventeen. She also told me I should read something different. She thought I was reading too many books about war. She thought I should branch out a bit.

I remember thinking at the time, in my smart-alecky boy logic, that I was reading more books and thicker books than anyone else in class, certainly more books than any other boy, and shouldn’t my teacher have been satisfied with that? Why did she have to boss me around about which book I was reading, especially when this was leisure reading and not book-report reading?

I can remember the day when she made the suggestion; it was in front of the entire classroom. It’s not that she singled me out—she did, but she singled everyone out, making recommendations for everyone in class. While I wasn’t happy about someone telling me what to read (I still have a problem being told what to do by someone else), I didn’t want to get into trouble and lose my library privileges, and I was happy not to be the kid who was singled out with the challenge, “Why don’t you try to finish at least one book before the end of school?” I tried to find something else to read.

The first book I read after the challenge was about a family who escaped from East Germany during the Cold War. I didn’t think it counted as a war book. It was more of an espionage book, and besides, it was fiction. It was very exciting; each member of the family used a different route or method to find their way into West Germany.

The thing about reading books about war is that it is such a broad topic. In my elementary school, and in the Winkler County Library, there were rows of books about the American Revolution and the Civil War, about Hannibal and the Punic Wars, about the Spartans, about Alexander the Great, about Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. There weren’t many good books about World War I and World War II in the 1960s, so I hadn’t started that huge topic yet.

I told this story to Cyndi, my loving wife who also happens to be a very good fifth-grade teacher, and for some reason she immediately took the side of my old teacher. Cyndi said if I were in her class, she would’ve encouraged me to expand into more topics. She would’ve tried to expand my horizons, so to speak—which, come to think of it, is one of her projects for me even as we are married and I am a grown-up.

I told Cyndi about the time I checked out a book titled Man O’ War, expecting to read about an 18th-century British battleship, only to be disappointed to find out the book was about some silly horse who won a couple of big-name races. Who cared about that, is what I thought. But I finished the book anyway, and made sure my teacher knew I was expanding my horizons. I respectfully brought it to her attention that I had read about a horse, not war.

The teacher’s advice was correct, of course. I needed more variety in my life. But in those days, I was still too young to know good advice when I heard it, something I am still trying to outgrow.

It wasn’t that I was a budding warrior. I’m still not a gun guy, and I never aspired to be in the military. I’m not sure why I read all those books about war, or why I continue to read them today. I think it might be because I enjoy the strategy, the decision-making under combat conditions and the after-battle analysis. I think I am also drawn to the men, ordinary men, who make quick decisions in courage under fire that turn the tide of battle.

I don’t picture myself as a soldier in spite of my habit of reading books about war, but I do hope to be an ordinary guy who helps turn the tide at the critical moment.

Berry Simpson, a Sunday school teacher at First Baptist Church in Midland, is a petroleum engineer, writer, runner and member of the city council in Midland. You can contact him through e-mail at berry@stonefoot.org.