Story Time Anonymous

Some parents have to take their kids for a drive before they can fall asleep, and others have to sing to them. Mine had to tell me a story — or two, or three, or ten — before I went to bed every night.

Storytime was my favorite part of the day — it always has been. When my parents ran out of stories I started reading books, or rather inhaling them. I’d pull all-nighters just to finish the last book in the Harry Potter series for the third time, just to start the Percy Jackson series the next day (also for the third time). Books were a part of my body — the same way there was a head on my shoulders, there was always a book in my hand. But when I joined my school’s newspaper in the 10th grade, I got a taste of a storytime sweeter than any other.

One of my first assignments was interviewing two transfer students at my school. One was from the Czech Republic, and the other from Germany. The interview lasted almost two hours, during which I learned that students in the Czech Republic take a shocking 14 classes per year, and that the whole wheat bread I’d been eating all my life tasted like cardboard in comparison to Germany’s. It was like tasting chocolate--or German bread--for the first time. Other food just stops tasting as good....