Reading Cereal Boxes

Recently, in Classic Peanuts, (one of the zombie comic strips Bill Watterson warned about, a fate he insisted would not come to Calvin and Hobbes) Peppermint Patty read a cereal box for her book report.

It stirred a fond memory. I was a voracious reader as a child, an activity apparently not available to boys today, as pleasure reading has become a gendered activity.

I read the morning paper or my latest book while eating breakfast. If the paper failed to arrive and my book was not easily accessible, I read the cereal box.

This was in line with my intention of reading the entire Encyclopedia Americana. Paper encyclopedias: another lost pleasure. Tell me the last time you looked at a Wikipedia entry and were entranced by the next entry. You can’t tell me because it isn’t possible. You see only one complete entry at a time; there is no serendipitous entry on “the same page.”

I only got up to the letter E in the encyclopeda. My god, there are a lot of boring articles in an encyclopedia. But these habits probably explain my relatively good showing as a game show contestant.

I suspect I am repeating these stories. By the time I was 14, I had read every book in the science fiction section of the Hollywood branch of the Multnomah Country Library (and was a member of the Science Fiction Book of the Month club).

When mom sent me out to play, I went out the front door and walked until I was out of sight. Then I snuck back into our backyard, where I hid books under the awning. I would then sit and read in our backyard apple tree. She didn’t discourage me from reading, she just thought I should engage in the occasional physical activity. To my detriment, I thought she was wrong.

Comments

[Robert E. Malchman]

Why is rerunning great comics a "zombie" activity to be abjured? I still watch Star Trek, Perry Mason, Law & Order in reruns. Why shouldn't I read old Doonesburies, Peanuts, Get Fuzzies, etc.?

I read the encyclopedia, too (World Book), though I'd start by looking up the article I wanted to read, and then I'd page through to see if there was other stuff that would catch my eye. As for Wikipedia, it's not so much the next article, it's the links in the article I'm reading. For example, tonight I watched episode 1 of Monsieur Spade (Clare and I really liked it, FWIW). Afterward, I looked up "Sam Spade" and "Maltese Falcon," including the book, the famous 1941 film and the less famous 1931 film, with a detour into "Una Merkel" who played Effie in the '31 version. NONE of that would have been available in a print encyclopedia. We live in a time when essentially all of human knowledge is literally at our fingertips. For you and me and others who feast on information and knowledge, it is a feast of incomparable proportions.

Oh, and one of the benefits of growing up in New York City in the 1970s is that I was NEVER sent out to play!