Jim Adams
Rotorua
Thank goodness for libraries
I felt as if Rob Rattenbury was telling my story (Opinion, May 17).
I was also an asthmatic child – a little bit older than Rob. In the mid-1940s and through the 1950s, I was also often absent from school because of asthma attacks.
A friend from school would sometimes bring me schoolwork to complete at home. Confined to bed and sometimes hospitalised, books were my salvation. Hospitals back then did not supply much else in the way of a diversion.
At home I shared a bedroom with an older sister who was not a reader. Consequently, in the evenings in front of the open fire I could be found reading.
The time would come when my sister and I would be told to go and get ready for bed. My sister was happy to tuck into bed with lights out which didn't suit me.
Off I would go, get into my pyjamas and then I would sneak back into the lounge and hide behind the big old sofa we had at the time and bury my head in a book.
After some time, I would hear my mother say to my dad – "Has Trish gone to bed yet?" The game was up and I would be sent off to bed with a flea in my ear.
Reading must have served me well in spite of many absences from the classroom as when I started college the aptitude test placed me in the academic class.
I am still an avid reader and cannot go to sleep at night without reading a few chapters of the current library book. My husband is also a reader and consequently our children always had a bedtime story and later we enjoyed reading to our grandchildren.
Thank goodness for libraries.
Trish Simpson
Te Puke
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