The Life and Times of the Watters Family

Everything Old Is New Again

It’s incredible watching one’s kids grow up. I know this is a theme here lately, but it sure seems like it wasn’t long ago they were still chubby-cheeked toddlers, barely able to independently navigate terrain more treacherous than the living room floor.

Now, they’re full-fledged little people, with their own crazy ideas about how the world works. And now, they can read. This is a good, but scary thing. It’s a good thing because they can learn so many new things from books. It’s a scary thing because they can learn so many new things from books.

I was a voracious reader myself when I was young, and I learned about a whole host of things from books that I’m sure my parents would have preferred I didn’t including, among other things, vulgar vocabulary, semi-deviant sexual practices, methods of emotional and intellectual manipulation and detailed descriptions of drug use and associated lifestyles. Actually, that last one probably helped more than it hurt, as it basically caused me to be completely horrified by the consequences of illicit drug use, but I digress.

Of course, knowing the various things I learned from books, I can be vigilant as their reading tastes evolve. Fortunately, for now, the reading material they prefer is pretty tame. In fact, it’s been a nice little trip down memory lane as they’ve read (or had read to them) many of the books that I loved as a kid. We started last year with Where The Red Fern Grows, which we read to them. More recently, though, Sean has been reading the Value Tales. I’m sure they’re full of fictionalizations and white-washed accounts of historical events, but they’re a fun way to learn the basics about the lives of important historical figures. So far, I think he’s read about Columbus, Jackie Robinson, Will Rogers, Luis Pasteur, Orville & Wilbur Wright and Benjamin Franklin.

From my own childhood, I particularly remember the tales of Robinson and Pasteur. The only one I actually owned was the one about Pasteur; I think it was the one they gave out for free, hoping your parents would buy the rest. We didn’t buy the others, of course, so the others that I remember must’ve been from school. Fortunately, Betsy’s family had a sizable collection that managed to survive the years and is now available to our boys.

This past Saturday, because it was raining, and because Betsy had some projects of her own to work on, I took the boys to the library. While we were there, I stumbled across a series of books that I fell in love with around second or third grade — The Three Investigators. It’s a series of books in the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys tradition, but with younger pre/early-teen protagonists living in southern California. In hindsight, one of the things that probably lead me to prefer this over the Hardy Boys (which I also read extensively) was the fact that Jupiter Jones, the leader of the group, was a husky, precocious, well-spoken know-it-all that wasn’t intimidated by adults. Basically, me (or at least how I liked to think of myself).

We picked up a few of them and I’ve started reading the “first” of the three (it’s actually volume #2, but I couldn’t find volume #1). I’m amazed at how much of the story detail I still remember from 20 years ago.

I’m sure the boys will find their own pet books and stories as they continue to become better and better readers, but it sure is a ton of fun sharing with them the books that so amply fueled my imagination during the same time in my life.

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