When I was in the fifth grade I had one of those cranky-old-lady teachers who was mean. I've always had an anti-authoritarian streak in me and that year in protest I stopped reading. I read what I needed to get by in school but that was it.
In the 9th grade I was on a trip somewhere and bored and I stumbled upon a book called Slapstick. It was a weird and funny book set in the near future when gravity becomes unstable. On a heavy day gravity could pull the guts out of a horse. On a light day a man could hop to the top of the Empire State Building. Besides being a complete crack-up, the existential undertones of the book were really compelling.
After that I read any book by Kurt Vonnegut I could find. This actually wasn't all that easy at the time, I was in a small town and the nearest bookstore was 30 miles away. We didn't have a used book store, and we sure didn't have Amazon.com. But in looking for his books I stumbled upon others and by the time we were assigned to read Slaughterhouse 5 in the 12th grade I'd already read most of Vonnegut's books and had become an avid reader.
So thanks KV. You did a little good. May you rest in peace.
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