My Dad's Impact on My Literacy Journey

     Dad is and always has been the polar opposite of my mom. You'll notice in the linked post that I've included a photo of her and I together. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so what does it mean that I don't have a single picture with my dad on my phone? For the sake of maintaining uniformity between posts, here's a photo of the type of father I wish I'd had growing up:

    This is Bandit, the dad from popular Australian cartoon Bluey. He's a great father who loves his daughters; he encourages their imaginations by playing games with them and always shows them he loves them.

    Unlike the little girls in the cartoon, I've never been close to my dad. Like Bandit, he fostered my imagination when I was little, but not for the better. I hated going to his house for court-mandated visitations every other weekend, so I would mope the whole time. The only thing he could do to stop me from crying (or getting angry) was to placate me with books. Every night before going to bed, he would spend roughly half an hour reading to me. We read many series, most of them the type of content Mom probably wouldn't think too highly of. 

    I vividly remember the night Dad introduced me to the Artemis Fowl series. After hugging my grandparents goodnight (he lived with them for a while after the divorce) against my will, I shuffled into our hallway of the house. We had just finished reading the last Percy Jackson book of the first series, so we needed something new to read.

    He said to me, "I don't have the first book, do you mind reading the seventh book instead? We can find you a new series tomorrow."

    I didn't care what it was that we read — all I cared was that it delayed my bedtime — so I told him to go ahead. I was hooked on Artemis Fowl's adventures from the very first scene I'd ever experienced. In the following month, I finished the whole series, often staying up late in the night reading. Me not sleeping while I was there is a common theme. You see, it's important to know that for a long period of time I shared a bed with Mom because I was too scared to sleep by myself. I valued the nightly reading routine with Dad so much because it pushed back the inevitable moment I'd have to attempt falling asleep by myself despite being convinced something evil would come after me the moment I drifted off with no adult there to protect me.

    At this point, anyone with a lick of sense might wonder why a parent would read books with intense, often dangerous plots to a child who clearly had undiagnosed anxiety issues. Looking back on it, I wonder whether I had a naturally overreactive imagination that was just exacerbated by him, or if my sleep would've been fine if it weren't for him exposing me to material that was above what I could handle emotionally. He didn't seem to understand that being able to comprehend the content in a literary sense is not the same as being able to manage how it makes you feel. 

    Regardless of the 'what-ifs', Dad shaped my taste in literature. All the books I've read, especially the two Percy Jackson series, show clear influences on my creative writing. In spite of his negative influence, I do owe a big deal of credit to him for shaping my literacy.