There is a family story that my mom tells, about how when I was some young age, I would look at books by myself after bedtime, and downstairs Mom and Dad would just hear "Plop. .... Plop. .... Plop." as I dropped them one by one. Over the years my memory warped the story, as memories do, as my attempt to include it in one of my college application essays demonstrated. As it turned out, I had unrecognizably romanticized the story in my sub-conscious attempts to project "collegiate material" to The University of Chicago, and described my two-year old self as "gazing up at never-ending dark wood shelves in quiet awe, sliding volume after volume of hardcover tomes off each shelf, burying myself in literature from such a young age" or some such schmaltz.
When I asked my mom to proofread my essays, and she pointed out that my memory of the story may have been ever so slightly exaggerated -- it seems my tomes of choice were mostly Golden Books in my bedroom, and even when I did get into the grown-up (not dark wood) bookshelves, the selection was not nearly so erudite as I was trying to project. I was annoyed at the time, but have since found it in my soul to forgive her frankness, (plus my revised essay became a lot more earnest and sweet). Alas, poor Moss has our debilitating book addiction to contend with when he includes his version of this story in his college essays -- he really did start with the philosophy section of our (tall, dark-wooded) library shelves:
Okay so Knitting 101 is not so fancy, but there's definitely some Plato and Cicero thrown in there...
Thumbing through some Camus, some light afternoon reading
I'm really digging the placement of "Order Amid Chaos"...
No comments:
Post a Comment