Recently, my younger sibling (the middlest of us middle siblings) brought me the last of my things from my parents’ house. A lot of it was model train stuff that used to belong to my dad and that now belongs to me for reasons I don’t remember (I probably said I’d take it when he mentioned planning to throw it out sometime a decade or so ago), but this delivery also included a bunch of the seasonal decorations that had been given to me in my childhood and all of my “baby books” as my family called them (pretty much anything for kindergardeners and younger). I had a pretty impressive collection (all of us did), but I think I might have held onto mine the best. I was always the kid most interested in building my book collection. I reread things the most. I enjoyed having them since, with one exception, books were never forbidden to me in a household where every other piece of media I ever acquired had to be vetted by my parents to make sure it was appropriate for me. Which is funny, since books wound up being some of the most subversive stuff I ecountered as a kid in a lot of ways, some of which weren’t always terribly constructive or thought-provoking. I mean, I remember tearing pages out of my Dragon Ball manga because some of the art showed a woman’s breasts and I knew I’d lose all access to manga (which had somehow fallen under the blanket approval of books in my parents’ minds) just as well as I remember how Fullmetal Alchemist taught me to be more critical of authority. Or how Tuck Everlasting taught me that maybe endless anything wasn’t actually something I should desire (which laid the groundwork for me questioning the faith I was raised to accept without thought) and how Hatchett taught me how to start fires without matches.