Second To The Right And Straight On Til Morning

Admittedly, as a kid I read very little.  What few books I did read were all the wrong ones.  The only consistent reads were “Choose Your Own Adventure” books (which now, looking back, proved to be prophetic because that’s kind’ve the way I live my life) and a few selections from a series about World War II that I was turned on to by friends.  We were in grade school and only read them because the soldiers said “fuck” a lot and there was one gratuitous sex act in every book. 

Later in life it dawned on me that there is a GIANT world out there tucked neatly within the covers of books.  I started out reading a few of the classics:  Old Man and the Sea, The Great Gatsby, etc.  Now I rotate stock between classics, biography, self help, novels, and a variety of other categories.  Typically I juggle two or three books at a time.  Right now I’m reading Jonathon Tropper’s This Is Where I Leave You and Peter Pan.  Yes, Peter Pan. 

J.M. Barrie’s idea of a boy who would never grow up, as legend has it, was born out of the loss of his brother who died at the age of fourteen in an ice skating accident.  From devastation blossomed my unknowing hero: Peter Pan.

I can’t believe that even as a child I never read Peter Pan.  I think this book influenced me long before I read it!  The seed of everlasting youth was planted in my brain in my adolscence and now it is a beautifully flowered vine that has intertwined itself in my brain, heart, and soul.  

“Pan, who and what art thou?” he [Hook] cried huskily.
“I’m youth, I’m joy,” Peter answered at a venture, “I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.”