When did reading become a guilty pleasure?

Since when did reading become a guilty pleasure? When I was a kid, summertime, to me, meant two things: visiting my grandparents in Southern Virginia, and lots and lots of reading. Of course, at that time, I also read throughout the rest of the year, but come summer, I would fill my backpack up with a whole stack of books (even then my greatest fear was running out of reading supplies), visit libraries in two separate states on opposite coastlines, and settle in for a couple months of real, unadulterated reading. Reading was my summer pastime and the places I read were their own small adventures: in a tree; in Granny’s rock garden, laid out on one of the flat, sun-kissed stones; by the creek; on the deck with a lap full of fuzzy new kittens; in the Green room closet-turned-library; on the antique couch in the living room; in the car on the way to some other delightful summer excursion. It wasn’t s filler, something I snuck in between other important and fun activities when there wasn’t enough time to do anything else. It was a thing in and of itself. It was the important and fun activity. Nothing said I’ve earned this rest like settling in and reading a whole book, start to finish, without budging, except maybe to give your learning elbow a rest, or brush a tiny beetle off your ankle.

            Even when I got older, and our family trips to Roanoke became less frequent, Summer still meant reading, on the beach, then, or in Bogart’s coffee shop, or in my yellow bedroom with Bingo (the bird) perched on my shoulder, sometimes with some studying thrown in, maybe, once standardized tests became a way of getting somewhere, but still more reading than studying. Which brings me to yesterday, on my couch in Kansas City, older still, now, and still reading, but, it struck me suddenly, in a very different way. I had two and a half hours from the time I got home from my first scheduled event to the time I had to leave for my second scheduled event. (Scheduled events, I have found, are a thing that adults presumably created in order to enrich their lives and make easier the bondages of adulthood responsibilities, but they have actually, from what I can tell, greatly reduced our existence to droll appointment keeping, like we are secretaries, instead of masters, of our own lives.) Anyway, I had two and a half hours to – I don’t know – address wedding invitations, or clean the kitchen, do laundry, study for the PRAXIS (the standardized test that, due to a technicality, has reentered my life, cost me one hundred forty six dollars, and wasted hour of my time), make more appointments, plan dinner, or – well, you know the list; you likely have one of your own. But I sat down, instead, to read. Guiltily. And it was the guilt that surprised me. My summer break began nearly a week ago and I had not once in that time sat down to read a book for longer than thirty minutes. So when my book-absorption hit forty five minutes, I began to feel anxious, not because I was sick of reading, but because I felt a responsibility to be doing something else. And by an hour in, I had reached a full on state of guilt. Like entire cities were crumbling around me while I did nothing. Like I could have been saving the lives of innocent babies, but was instead lolling about on my sofa engaged in a mere story. An hour of reading and I felt as though I had squandered any productivity the day had to offer. No wonder people don’t read anymore. If I, a reader by trade, a person who believes stories are innately essential to meaningful human existence, can’t make it through an hour of reading without feeling extravagantly lazy, then who does?

            I hate to admit it, but I watch The Bachelor. I have a perfectly valid justification for doing so, if anyone wants to hear it (which no one ever does; evidently nobody really cares why – or that – I choose to waste an hour of my life once a week indulging in scripted fantasies of spontaneous love). So I don’t talk about it much. I’m a little embarrassed by it and so I prefer to indulge in that embarrassment alone – or with select people who expressly wish to join in it with me. And yet, when I sit down to watch The Bachelor, I generally watch it all the way through, on my couch, with a snack and a blanket, dinner and grading papers be damned. So why is this real guilty pleasure an easy hour spent and the reading of a great book unjustifiable to my conscience?

            Most of what I remember of elementary school is recess and reading (except Kindergarten during which I vividly remember using staples, tape, and stickers to make extraordinary pieces of useless art; and a few distinct memories of writing compositions too long for anybody to read; and, of course, my first poem in second grade which set me on the path to becoming a writer.) In elementary school, reading was also an adventure. We read in our seats and on the carpet. We read alone to ourselves, we read to each other, we read in reading groups, and we were read to. Daily. Reading was the thing. It was (at least part of) the lesson for the day. Education theory will tell you that around third grade, we shift from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” Certainly, by high school, reading is no longer the thing anymore; it is instead a means to an end. By high school, we have also stopped reading together, for the most part. (Interestingly, the excerpts from novels my high school English teachers reread aloud to us still stand out distinctly in my mind – the teacher’s reading mannerisms, their voices, the discovery of something in the story I had not heard before. Even then, being read to was a sacred affair.) By high school, reading is homework. Writing that word recalls to mind Mark Twain’s wise observation that, “Work and play are two words used to describe the same thing under different circumstances.” By the time I was in high school, reading, regardless of whether it was homework or not, was a joy to me, but I don’t think the same is true for most people. By high school, we have taken all the play out of reading, and along with it, the indulgence, the relaxation, the intrigue, the sense of self-gain. We have relegated it to work.

            And now I work in a school, assigning reading work to my students each night. I also have a bad tendency to be a hover teacher. At times when students are supposed to be working and thinking independently or with each other, I have a strong urge to hover. To circulate the room, butting in, prompting, answering questions they should be answering on their own. They will tell you that hovering is good teacher practice, but I have learned from experience that that is only partially true. Equally as important is providing space between. Students will take anything you will give them to try to come up with your thoughts instead of their own. And most of them are practiced in this luring of other peoples’ ideas because they have found it to be easier and less scary than coming up with their own. If you refuse to say words, they will read your face instead, and your body language, and will snatch answers – rightly or wrongly – anyway from what you are not saying, without thinking about them at all. But if you remove yourself from their direct access, make yourself small and unobtrusive in the corner, both inertia and social stigma will encourage them to use their own minds and each others’ to develop new thoughts, instead of the teacher’s old ones. Hover teachers get answers, but usually they are merely their own – or a perversion of their own – spoken back to them.

            So what do I do in the spaces that I try to force myself to allow my students? I work. I do the innumerable tasks that come up unpredictably in the daily life of a teacher, and I do the more routine ones, like taking role and grading papers. And every once in a blue moon, I find myself caught up – momentarily – on all of those things and I take out a book to read. And inevitably, I feel guilty. Maybe I should hover more, I think to myself (though it has only been thirty seconds since I last hovered). Maybe I should check my email again, or lesson plan for next month. Maybe I should reorganize, or regrade, or make a new seating chart. What part of a reading, a well-read, high school English teacher is detrimental to students? What part of my job description delegates that I don’t waste time reading? When has a reference to something I have read ever diminished a conversation I have had, with students or other people? Not only that, but when has a happy and fulfilled person ever been worse at her job, as a teacher or a citizen of society? And yet, reading during class, as an English teacher, makes me feel guilty.

            Adulthood is not easy, but it’s also, sometimes, not wise. And I’d like to see what would happen to our society if we took a little more extended time to book read and a little less to rant, or cell phone, or hurry around. It’s hard to imagine that things would take a turn for the worse. If delving into a story is wasted time, then so, it seems, by extension, is taking the time to think divergently, to grow in compassion, to build new ambitions. If laundry is a more important adult task than reading a book, what happens to greatness and community and innovation?

          I fought the guilt. I finished my book. And it was great. It made me feel proud and patriotic and hopeful over things and times I will never experience myself. I didn’t even notice the unclean laundry. Neither did Jason. Neither did the world. Maybe laundry should be the guilty pleasure. As in: why am I wasting time folding clothes that I’m about to unfold again when I could be reading a book; expanding my worldview; building something with my hands; dancing with a forlorn child; creating a feet of engineering genius; painting a reflection of God’s greatness; helping the impoverished; or sitting by a campfire watching for shooting stars, just because that kind of faith and soul-renewing is what makes living life worthwhile. What kind of adult wisdom makes reading, of all things, a guilty pleasure? 

-R.E.A.