The Reading Promise

Alice Ozma
from The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared, 2011

    It started on a train. I'm sure of it. The 3,218-night reading marathon that my father and I call The Streak started on a train to Boston, when I was in third grade. We were reading L Frank Baum's The Tin Woodman of Oz ... a few hours into our trip. The woman across the aisle turned to us and asked why my father was reading to me on a train. We simply told her that this was what we always did - he had been reading to me every night for as long as I could remember ... Why not read? Why not always read?
    But her surprise made us think. If we were going to read on vacation anyway, how hard could it be to make reading every night an official goal? I suggested to my father that we aim for one hundred consecutive nights of reading, and he agreed to the challenge. This is how I remember it.
    If you ask my father, though, ... he'll paint an entirely different picture.
    "Lovie," he tells me, as I patiently endure his version of the story, "you're cracked in the head. Do you want to know what really happened or are you just going to write down whatever thing comes to mind?"
    ... "For some time, I'd been planning to suggest to you that we do a streak, because then at least you'd be a little older when we stopped reading together. I brought it up, and honest to Pete, I thought you were going to say we should read a hundred nights in a row!" He laughs as he recalls this. I don't laugh because I think I did suggest a hundred nights in a row. Initially.
    "No," he continues, "Right away you said, 'Let's do one thousand!' And I had to pretend to be enthusiastic, of course, but I wasn't too optimistic. One thousand nights is a long time."
    I have to stop him there. None of this sounds right to me. First I remind him that our goal had been one hundred nights. When we reached that goal, however, and celebrated with a pancake breakfast at the local greasy spoon, we decided to set a new goal. We skipped the discussions of lower options, from two hundred to five hundred, and ultimately decided to try for one thousand nights. I tell him this, but he shakes his head. When I try to explain that The Streak actually began on the train he cuts me off.
    ... "I remember that part clearly," he continues, "because I never miss an opportunity to brag about what a good father I am. We were on the train to Boston, going up to see the sights for a weekend, and the woman next to us said how sweet it was that I was reading to you. I told her right away that we were on a streak, forty nights in! I was pleased with myself, ... pleased as a peacock to have made it forty nights."
    We both laugh this time, but I am laughing partly because I know he is wrong. The train was the first night. Obviously.
    The thing is, no matter how many times we are asked, we can never get this story straight. We agree on a few of the details, but I was very young and he is getting older. Some memories blend together with others, and our individual versions of how The Streak started change so often, it is nearly impossible to come to any sort of agreement. We can't even remember when we started calling it The Streak, or whose idea it was to do so.
    ... "Problem with my remembrances, though," he admits, "is that they're always so goofed up."
    I sit for a minute, comparing my notes on both versions of the story, seeing what they have in common.  
    ... I'm not sure if this is a saying I'm expected to know or a literal plan, but it's apparent that the conversation is over. I didn't think we'd come to an agreement, anyway.
    But this is how I remember it.


I chose this excerpt from the memoir because the author clearly shows how two people recall events differently, especially as time passes. The author and her father can't come to an agreement of how their reading streak began, though they both remember the events (with their own personal touch), the order of those events are different.