These last few days, I have been having a very bad time in bed. I am dull to the core, and I have a cold so intense that it makes me shiver like never before. You know, I had a great fright. I don't usually get sick, but this time, I didn't escape one of those seasonal viruses that catch you carelessly and knock you down suddenly. But one is a bit stubborn, and in between recoveries, I typed one post or another until the headache incapacitated me.
So, it was until today, feeling much better, that I noticed the fortieth edition of our friend @ericvancewalton's initiative: What were your favorite books or stories when you were a child? On that note, I confess to you that perhaps, like you, I owe my evolution to books. I do not doubt it.
Reading opens your mind unsuspectedly, freeing you from physical limitations. I remember my mother's worries when she saw me engrossed in my room, in one of those books that fell into my hands, I don't know if by providence or by chance. What was certain was that they captivated me. On one occasion, my mother even instructed me to go out with my cousins, you know, to teenage parties. And I obeyed her. That day I arrived around midnight. She was worried, her soul came back to her body when she saw me arrive safe and sound. After that day, she let me go on with my routine wanderings in literature, and I, from time to time, had my little escapades with my cousins, without transgressing the hour of returning home, between nine and nine-thirty, after an evening of jokes and gossip.
Well, from my first voluntary readings, for pleasure and research, I remember the saga of Emilio Salgari, Sandokan the tiger of Malaysia; of Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon, Around the World in Eighty Days, and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea; just to name a few famous fictions. But perhaps the readings that had the greatest impact on me as a teenager were those that delved into mysteries. Some of them have still with me since the seventies. Among these, those of the Swiss Erich von Däniken, one of the precursors of the theory of ancestral aliens, stand out. Titles such as The Return to the Stars, Prophet of the Past, and The Answer of the Gods; stirred my ideas to no end. From the Mexican Rodolfo Benavides I read with eagerness, Cuando las piedras hablan, los hombres tiemblan, and, En la noche de los tiempos; from Charles Berlitz his bestseller, El misterio del triángulo de las Bermudas; and I don't want to overlook the first six books of Caballo de Troya by JJ Benítez.
Quite some reading for a teenager from a border town! I wouldn't blame anyone if they gave me the moniker of conspiracist. Ha ha ha ha. Of course, nowadays, some of the old, supposed superstitions have turned out to be true. Don't believe me? Just ask the U.S. Congress in its investigation of anomalous objects captured by the U.S. Navy.
Well, now, such readings have been transferred to the audiovisual format and are accepted with less reluctance than in the past. The mystery is still alive.
You know an interesting fact, my first purchase that I remember, was a beautiful large format book in full color, an encyclopedia called something like Great Mysteries and Enigma of Humanity. I paid for it with the savings from almost a year's allowance that my parents gave me for snacks at school. I was in fifth grade, and I bought it from a classmate who already had the mind of a merchant. The price, is 100 bolivars, about 24 US dollars today. A large sum for a boy of eleven years old. I kept it for a long time until I gave it as a gift to one of my brothers-in-law, who was then in bad company, in an attempt to keep him away from devious paths. I wasn't very successful, but that's another story.
Yes, I could expand on my juvenile readings, but I suspect in becoming buried and abusing your attention. I hope you liked parts of my memoir, especially if you are fascinated by mystery.
Thank you very much.
Memories by @janaveda was originally written in Spanish and translated to English with www.deepl.com (free version)
The cover image was created by me using Mac Keynote
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