Today’s prompt from Long and Short Reviews is: what were you like as a kid? But first, WWW Wednesday!

WHAT have you finished reading recently? The Shaping of England, Isaac Asimov. And, technically, Public Libraries and their Communities, one of my textbooks for this semester.

WHAT are you reading now? When the Earth Had Two Moons. Also looking through a collection of substack essays published as an e-book.

WHAT are you reading next? Trying to get into Rebecca by du Maurier.

What was I like as a kid? Well, some things haven’t changed. I used to read through stacks of books every week: the children’s director joked that I’d read every book in the library at one point. Lots of history and nature books, of course, but I also enjoyed ghost stories and regular kids’ novels. I was raised in a home without television, so reading was my main entertainment — but I also spent a lot of time outside, telling stories with my toys and using whatever I had on hand as props. To use my G.I. Joe base as an example: some of it was cinder blocks, but the chrome panels of a fire engine, with all their dials and such, were the ‘controls’ of the base, and I used an empty wrapping paper tube so my Joes could slide to the ‘motor pool’. I also enjoyed jumping on a trampoline for hours on end, as well as shooting hoops when I got older. Although I did play outside with friends — we’d explore the woods, play ‘war’, play basketball together — I was fairly comfortable being alone. I’d also read outside, of course, and one of my fondest memories is using plywood and cinder blocks to ford my way across a swamp to a wooded area beyond where I remember reading Redwall. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I could have simply walked around the swampy area and gotten into the woody area from behind. Fording was a lot more fun, anyway. (I lived near two vacant lots that were used to store piles of sand, gravel, and cinderblocks. Young me yoinked these as he pleased, and he also tore ribbons off of trees that had been marked for being removed.) As you might guess, my parents were not helicopter parents: after school we’d be outside until dark, and on Saturdays and summers I was basically feral, drinking from a water hose and coming inside only to get a sandwich around lunchtime. I’d be covered in bites and scratches! Because of my odd religious background, I was an outsider at school and got on well mostly with other outsiders: my personality changed completely once I was home, as my best friend found to his surprise in middle school. He was startled to find that quiet bookworms can morph into class clowns in the blink of an eye.