The first object I remember being absolutely fascinated by I was very little was books.
From the day I was born, people gave me books as gifts. Some were baby books – I had quite a collection of baby books featuring the Muppets, some cute ducks, etc. Another book I was gifted on my literal birth day was The Little Prince, which was such an incredible gift in hindsight. The dedication alone is such a beautiful, meaningful thing (gracias Enrique Roman).
As a toddler I loved looking at my books, I enjoyed the drawings, but I knew the funny dark squiggly lines held a very strange power. They fascinated me.
My parents are voracious readers and I was a quiet kid, so I let them read in peace while I played with my toys.
Their books didn’t have drawings, just millions of squiggly lines, but they held such an enormous power that it paralyzed my parents for hours at a time. I wondered why.
I had my dad read my books to me almost every night. Some time when I was 3 he came home in a bad mood and when I asked him to read me a Donald Duck book for the umpteenth time, he said, “No, I’m going to show you how to read it yourself”. And for the next few hours he had me learn the shapes and what they sounded like and how they connected. Very late at night the squiggles acquired meaning in one of those “Aha!” moments. It helped that Spanish is much, much easier to read, phonetically, than English.
By four I read everything in my path, usually kiddie comics but my grandma was beginning to buy me books for older kids. For a very long time she’d but me a book every week, something I am tremendously grateful for. I knew intrinsically the power the squiggly lines hold when you can derive meaning from them. And I remember since little I desperately wanted to learn how to become a writer so I’d have that power, too.
By five I was writing compositions at school instead of single words. At six the teachers sat me down and had me write a paragraph about Benito Juarez – they said they had liked my homework assignment so much, they wanted me to write another one. I happily obeyed – I liked being liked by my teacher a lot. She was very pretty to me.
Years later I figured out they must have wanted to see if my mom had done my homework for me.
By six I was writing short stories. By nine I was reading old encyclopedias at my grandparent’s house out of desperation for reading material. I developed a tremendous curiousity about so many things in the world around me. It helped that my dad is also a very curious person with an incredible DIY mindset. That year we installed a big-ass six-foot satellite dish on the roof of our seventh floor apartment. Incredibly dangerous and irresponsible in hindsight, but that made me want to learn about satellites, about electronics, and the conclusion of all the projects I “helped” with was, “this stuff was made by humans who understand how it works, so if I can figure out how it works, I can make it, too”. So I began reading electronics and computer magazines and books and a whole new world opened to me.
By 13 I was reading stuff that was definitely not suitable for anyone under 30. But it was all input and information and learning something brought more questions and curiosity never ceased, nor did the power of letters turned into words turned into meaning.
And I still want to be known as a writer one day. All I need is to give shape to the story I want to tell.