How me not wanting to eat my vegetables formed a friendship with books

I absolutely despise being told what to do. When you are younger, your parents are your lifeline. They inform you what the difference between right and wrong is, how to take care of yourself, and make sure you eat correctly. Most importantly, encourage you in all your decision making. They try to do this all while not directly forcing you. When I was younger, you had to bribe me to do things. For example, I would only eat my vegetables if I could stay up an extra fifteen minutes that night. Of course, my parents were as stubborn as I was, never taking “no” for an answer. They would always switch things around me and say something like, “If you don’t finish your vegetables, you have to go to bed fifteen minutes early.” But the bribing went beyond food and chores as there was one thing that I never liked to do; read. I hated being told to read. I remember being a rambunctious, full of energy kid, and never sitting down and reading a book. In particular, books that I did not find interesting or the ones that I was forced to read for school. That brings me back to being told what to do. When I was told to sit down and read a book picked out by someone, I did not want to do it. Of course, I would sit there quietly and pretend to read the assigned book, but in reality, I would sit there, wishing I could do something else. There was also one person that always tried to get me to read, even bribing me to do it because he wanted me to love books as he did, and that was my dad.

My dad is the smartest person that I think I’ll ever know. He as a kid loved books and to this day says that the reason he became a doctor is that he loved to read and get to keep doing it. I am still confused as to why being a doctor and reading correlates but I just let him have it. Growing up I would be surrounded by books of all genres. In my dad’s library, he would have books that were medical, real estate, “make money fast,” entrepreneurship, mystery, fiction, cookbooks, etc. Anytime that he would finish a book it would go straight into the library. The library to this day is so full that I don’t think I have stepped foot in that room in a year because you cannot open the doors.

One summer, my dad told me that he wanted me to read more. He and I made a deal that if I read 100 books of his choice before school started, I would get a prize. This got my attention because I was getting something out of it and that I was not being forced to do it. My mischievous brain was coming up with a plan that I could trick my dad into thinking that I read the books without actually reading them. I felt that I could flip through reading a couple of pages, in the beginning, middle, and end, and then tell him the summary like that. To my dismay, my dad caught on to what I was doing, so then he forced me to sit down and read next to him in his library. Here we go again, doing what I hated, being forced. But you know that sort of thing made me actually sit down and read. We would sit in the musty library with the sun shining through the big windows. In the sun rays, you could see the dust particles floating in the air. Gross, but in a way that was super calming to me. That summer, I want to say that I read with my dad every single day. At one point, I ended up not feeling forced to read. It felt like I was spending time with my dad.

As I got older, again, anytime that I was forced to read something, I would never do it. My dad would still give me books to read but without the incentive of a prize. He would be like, “Carina, I just finished this book, and I think you would really like it,” and then I would set it aside, and I would never pick it up again. This was going back to the fact that I was being told to read the book. Like someone assuming that I would like it. I wanted to read on my own terms. I only read mystery books, at one point, I got interested in these donut shop mysteries that had donut recipes in between the chapters. That was all that I would read. Those books were something that I personally was interested in, and no one told me to read them. I still did not read books that I was given, so I never had a deep connection with reading. After that summer of reading, I did not continue to spend time reading books with my dad, but I wished it did. Maybe continuing would bloom into me loving books. Still, I wouldn’t say I like being told what to do by people, but my dad forcing me to read with him for that single summer changed the way that I looked at reading. I never had to be bribed after that with prizes for doing something I already should have been doing. I still do not like being told to read the books that he gives me, but I do try to make an effort. I do not hate reading. I do not love reading. I have a healthy relationship with books, but I never will love books the way my dad does. But that summer of him forcing me to read a hundred books made me hate reading, and people telling me what to do, a lot less.