Lights Out

Growing up, I was an exceptional rule follower. I always raised my hand to answer questions in school, put cereals back on the grocery store shelf when my mother said to, did my homework when I got home from school, and ate all of my vegetables. I was a poster child, but soon this subordinate attitude began to fade as I developed my own passions, one of which was reading.

I absolutely loved to read fictional novels. In school, on the bus, at the dinner table, before bedtime, any time I could have my hands on a book, I did. I began reading more chapter books as I got better at reading, and with more chapters came better cliffhangers and better plot twists. Naturally, I never wanted to put whatever book I was reading down. When I would read before bedtime, I would always complain when my mother told me lights out; because I was a good kid, I did as I was told. Or so I used to. Eventually, I became so hooked into the reading – the intense magic, the thrilling mystery, the untold future of the characters – that I would tell my mom and dad goodnight, wait for them to turn off my light and close my bedroom door, and listen for their footsteps leaving. I would count to 100 in my head and turn my bedside lamp on and reopen my book. I devoured each page like it was a warm, fresh baked chocolate cake. Every few hours one of my parents would get up to go to the bathroom. As soon as I heard footsteps I switched off my light and shoved my book under my blanket. I would wait, straining to hear their footsteps retreat to their bedroom over the sound of my own heartbeat in my ears. As soon as I thought the coast was clear I would be back to reading. Pretty soon the fresh baked chocolate cake that was my book was gone and I was up in the wee hours of the morning.

I owned virtually every Magic Tree House book published. That iconic series occupied my bookshelf’s real estate for many years. I would stay up nearly every night trying to get through an entire book, struggling to keep my heavy eyelids open long enough to finish a riveting paragraph. I desperately wanted my eyes to feel every inch of the soft pages, hear every detail whispering in my imagination, see every vivid event in my mind. Once it became normal for me to finish a book in a few days, I started asking for multiple books at once. I would read and reread these books over and over until I got new ones. This process went on until my parents no longer came into my room every single night to tell me goodnight. In a way, their lack of presence discouraged me from reading because not being allowed to was half of the fun.

Most people can relate to staying up past their bedtime to do something they are not supposed to. Whether that be to read, play video games, listen to music, or text their friends – we have all done it. Ordinary people and prodigies alike, people in authority and major public figures. Even the influential Malcolm X had stayed up past his bedtime to read while he was in prison: he tells us this in an autobiography before he died, that “Each time [he] heard the approaching footsteps, [he] jumped into bed and feigned sleep” (Malcolm 106). Guards would walk the hallways and every time Malcom heard them coming, he would pretend to be asleep until he could read again. His and my love for reading is similar in many ways, but I did not have to go to prison to discover my love for literature. We were defiant by nature and stuck to our guns for what we loved: reading. Our passion for reading pushed our character development further as we began to pursue it. We taught ourselves what was most valuable to us. From an outside view, prison may be an incubator for grudges, but from an inside perspective it can be a catalyst for love as well. 

In a way, the experience of reading when I was not supposed to made it more exiting to read. The reading itself was, of course, exciting; reading when it was not allowed just made it that much more enticing. The same might have been true for Malcom X. We have used knowledge that came from reading to shape our lives for the better. Literacy is an important tool that shapes lives and cultivates passion to read more, discover more, and put more meaning into our worlds.

Works Cited

Malcolm X. “Learning to Read”. Writing About Writing, 3rd ed., edited by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs, Bedford/St. Martins, 2017, pp. 106-115.