Large Family Idiosyncrasy #9: Restricting Books (Part Two)

Last week, I intended to cover several more book restrictions that were enforced over the years, but my reminiscences about Narnia got away from me, and I ran out of time. I present them now, therefore, as "Part 2":

1. No Fiction Before Breakfast

As book lovers, we are easily absorbed by a good story, and tend to lose track of time. Of all my siblings, I am perhaps the most guilty in this regard, and have often come to myself, after flipping over the final page, to discover that I can scarcely move, having sat in the same position for hours without shifting. When in the throes of an exciting book, there is a temptation to read until the last possible second before bedtime, and to pick the story back up as soon as my eyes open in the morning, having quite possibly dreamed about the characters in between.

However, we have always been encouraged, and sometimes required, to start our day off with personal Bible time, and too often when we started our day instead with reading a fictional adventure, we would forget to read our Bibles at all—not to mention neglecting our physical breakfast as well, which combined to negatively affect the whole morning. To curb this tendency, fiction was forbidden before breakfast.

2. No Reading in the Bathroom

Another temptation for great readers is to squeeze in a few extra pages during any spare moments in the day—and some not-so-spare moments. With only two bathrooms shared between up to twelve people, we cannot afford to have a child lingering longer than necessary to finish up the paragraph...the page...the chapter.

Exceptions were occasionally made for responsible siblings who were overseeing little ones' baths, however even this concession sometimes resulted in inordinately long baths, the water turning tepid, and the bathing children's fingers and toes becoming wrinkled, as the "responsible" (cough) sibling was herself immersed in a different reality.

3. Three Book Max Per Person on Road Trips

You can't see everyone's books, but there are at least seven people reading in this picture.

For those who have the stomach for it, road trips are fruitful reading times. Any time our family embarks on a trip, all of us kids stock up on books—more than enough to get us There and Back Again, wherever that happens to be. 

Once the van is full of children, however, there is only a limited amount of space for our baggage. Books, as you will be aware if you have ever traveled with them, take up space and weight, and for many years we were strictly limited to three books per person. 

Really, this was generously sufficient for any trip we made, since they were never longer than a week, but in our paranoia lest we should run out of reading material, we would coordinate our reading with one of our siblings, each bringing books that neither had read, thus practically increasing our stock of reading to six books rather than three.

There ought to be a word for "fear of running out of books to read while away from home". Whatever the Latin term, our family has this condition to an acute degree. We bring books with us to church. To the grocery store. To the doctor's office. To friends' houses for supper. Even when we're just walking to the end of the driveway to check the mail! 

As more and more children joined the ranks of readers, this phobia began to slow down our loading process, as people ran about the house searching for their book instead of getting straight into the van when they were told. Kids also tended to leave books in the car between trips, which was detrimental to their (the books') health, as they were often stepped on or kicked under the seats. In order to get us about town in a timely manner, and to save our books from abuse, our parents created another reading rule:

4. No Reading in the Car, Unless Traveling at Least 15 Minutes from Home

The distance from home was not originally such a neat time designation, rather it was fixed practically, by a certain friends' house where we had Bible study every week. They lived on the outskirts of town, and if we were driving there, or anywhere further afield, we were allowed to bring books to read on the way. If, however, we were merely going to church, or to spend the afternoon at our grandparents' house, we were supposed to leave our own books at home, and hang our hopes on our destination supplying any necessary reading material. 

A certain amount of smuggling occurred, of course, especially in the back rows of the van, which were less strictly supervised, but there was always the risk of confiscation, with its accompanying agony of not finding out how the story ended for an indeterminate length of time.