words are a girl’s best friend

Many years ago, when I was only knee-high to a grasshopper, my dad bought me my very own bookshelf. He assembled it, painted it pink and sat it against a wall in my bedroom between my cot and the mountain of stuffed toys in the corner.

I was in awe of the grandiose pink entity that now overwhelmed the room. Its six shelves were empty, but I knew they weren’t to stay that way.

One by one, week by week, my collection of stories grew.

I was gifted new books for Christmases and birthdays and ‘just because’, and I’d beg mum to throw just one more Little Golden Book into the supermarket trolley because ‘I don’t have that one yet, I promise!’

I’ve been told that I loved to sit by myself and read the books aloud, sometimes making up the words I didn’t yet recognise.

Sometime later, thanks to an enthusiastic dinnertime salesperson, the Encyclopaedia Britannica in its glorious, information-filled entirety made its way into my collection, and I began my journey to read everything I could about everything in the world, beginning with A and moving my way down the alphabet. (My sister and I became fascinated with the health series, particularly the chapters dealing with human anatomy. But that’s a story for another time…)

This is probably where my obsession with books and words began. If you look at my collection now, you’d see it hasn’t yet ended. (I’ve spent thousands of dollars on books, and I predict spending thousands of dollars more in the future.)

I was trawling my local bookstore the other day when I came across a rare gem amongst the token kid’s books they have on offer. There it was: the first story I remember reading in school. I was five years old, and I was one of the lucky kiddies chosen from my Prep class to read a few lines from Each Peach Pear Plum over the PA system for the entire school’s listening pleasure. I was stoked!

It had been many years since I’d seen the book, let alone read it, and as I scanned each page, I realised that I remembered the story word for word. The words and characters had stayed with me; they’d hidden in a nook somewhere in my head for all those years. Suffice to say, a lot has happened since then, so I was pleasantly surprised that the hundred-and-something words had stuck.

So I made my way to the counter and sat Each Peach Pear Plum beside my soon-to-be latest purchases of The Picture of Dorian Gray and Shantaram, and I left the store giddy, my belief in the power of words all but reinforced.