The Side Effects of Endorphins

I was younger my entire life. As an adult, I’am a voracious reader.. As an adult I have read to my kids as much as possible. It is one of my favorite things to do..

We didn’t have many books in the house as a kid. My parents were TV watchers.. My grandfather had a book and I believe it was called the Encyclopedia of Baseball. There weren’t many pictures in the book, but there were statistics for every player and every team..

It had standings from past seasons and so much information. I loved numbers.. I would read this book all the time.

I was also an avid reader of the newspaper. I had a routine.. I would lay the newspaper out on the floor and that’s where I would read it. Usually my dog, Fred would sit with me and read the paper. Sometimes she would sit on the paper. I still thought that was pretty cool.. Yes, my mom named a female dog -Fred.. I have no explanation for this but many theories..

I usually read the paper in this order. I would scan the front page for the West Coast baseball scores. I would then open to the sports page and read the statistics for the day and an occasional story. Then I would read the comics. Hagar the Horrible was my favorite.

The Reading Eagle

This was the paper I grew up with. They reported on local oddities. During the spring of the year, they would cover the local marbles tournament. Marbles players are called Mibsters. The term mibster most commonly refers to a passionate marble player or competitor. I would follow the marbles tournament because. It was on the front page of the paper.

They would also list the bowling scores. I would read them every day.. Dot Lapinski had a 523 series with her final game being a 203. I felt like I knew Dot just by reading her name in the paper.. Dot is a very common Berks County name. It was my grandmother‘s name shortened from Dorothy as well.

They also covered the results from the stock car races. Our parents took us to the races occasionally, but I would check the results on Friday and Sunday. That’s when they raced modified stock cars. I did not care that much for the Sprint car races on Saturdays.