The person who turned me into a reader

A small tribute to a great person

🏷️ Categories: Personal stories, Life lessons, Literature

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"Run like you have to go to the library."
Hermione Granger, from the Harry Potter saga

I never liked reading.

I considered it a hobby for older people or for those who had nothing better to do with their lives. I thought there were plenty of more interesting activities. That was me as a teenager.

That disdain for reading changed forever when I was 16 after an unexpected conversation.

It was noon and I was coming back from my high school classes. Before I got home, just up the street from me, I saw an older neighbor hauling big brown boxes full of books from his old, dented blue van to his house.

We knew each other from passing through the neighborhood; our exchanges were limited to brief greetings, perhaps due to the great age difference and his serious, reserved appearance. He was a man of about 60 years old, with old habits: he smoked a pipe and protected himself from the sun with a beret. His face was furrowed with wrinkles, and because of my taste for abstract painting, he always reminded me of Picasso.

The boxes he was carrying must have weighed a lot, the old man staggered with every step. I could see all the boxes stacked on the sidewalk in front of the door of his house, before my eyes there could easily be 300 books.

—Do you want me to help you? —Man, you'd be doing me a favor," he said with a chuckle.

I put my backpack aside and started moving boxes next to him. "Where did he get so many books?" I wondered as I lifted the dusty boxes out of his van.

—What are you doing with so many books? —They are mine, I brought them from my son's house, who is moving and has nowhere to take them.

He had read them all and was even thinking of selling them. When I finished moving the boxes, I quickly picked up my backpack to go back to eat, it was noon and my parents would be worried about my delay, but just before going out of the door...

—Hey, do you want to take any books with you? —he asked.

I took him up on his offer and grabbed a book at random. I didn't read, I took it out of politeness.

When I got home, I shared with my parents the encounter with the neighbor. They, because of their age, knew him better. They told me that the man had lived in Switzerland for many years. I mentioned to them the large number of books he had and his intention to sell them. Not that I was interested in reading, his intention to get rid of them stuck in my mind. "How much would each book cost?", I wondered as I walked down the street to ring his doorbell.

He greeted me with surprise. We stood talking on the doorstep and, as the conversation dragged on, I sat in his garden, in the shade of a leafy tree whose branches I always saw overhanging from outside his house as I walked past. He told me that he had lived in Switzerland for a decade, where he had worked for a shipping and moving company. Often, the belongings that customers did not want to take with them included books, and he, rather than sell them, kept them.

Thus, adding those he bought, he accumulated a personal library of some 600 books. His collection included works in several languages, a symptom of Swiss multilingualism. He also had books in Spanish, acquired after his return. I asked him about the price of the books and was surprised by the ridiculousness of the figure. I had never read, but for that price, who wouldn't buy them? Only in economic terms, the investment made sense; besides, the books do not expire, I could even read them someday.

When I got home, I shared with my parents the encounter with the neighbor. They, because of their age, knew him better. They told me that the man had lived abroad for many years, perhaps in Switzerland. I mentioned to them the large number of books he had and his intention to sell them. Not that I was interested in reading, his intention to get rid of them stuck in my mind, they must be worth a fortune. “How much would each book cost?”, I wondered as I walked down the street to ring his doorbell.

I spent the rest of the afternoon carrying boxes of books from his house to mine. I didn't have room for that many books in my room.

—If you bring any more books, we'll have to go out of the house to get them all in," my mother joked.

I had nowhere to put them, so I piled them up in my room, forming columns that stood five feet high from the floor. That night I slept surrounded by books, I was very excited by the immense amount of knowledge that those yellowish pages enclosed. We were forced to buy a huge bookshelf, and I still had to manage to fit them all in.

That man generated in me the curiosity to read, every time I go to the bookshelf and I start to rummage I feel like someone looking for a treasure. Some books are over 80 years old, others are indispensable classics. I am lucky. Since then, every time I see this gentleman, I greet him with gratitude. Thanks to him, I started reading and discovered how wonderful this hobby is. We have talked more times and I always greet him with joy.

We are not aware of the huge change that our small actions produce.

Thank you for making me a reader.

📌 Postscript 1: The idea of writing this text was born when I came across this gentleman a few days ago. I felt it would be excellent to pay him a tribute, however small.

📌 Postscript 2: I thought about writing letters about books, both analyzing classic works and bringing peculiar recommendations (I'm very prone to read strange books). Let me know what you think of the idea, I'll read you! See you next time 👋!