Richard Osmund: "Responding to Carmen Maria Machado: Fun while it lasted"

Richard Osmund

Responding to Carmen Maria Machado’s second question

Fun while it lasted

Not only do I have early memories of telling myself stories, but telling myself stories are my earliest memories. To explain, I have been exposed to all kinds of fiction by my parents since I was capable of following the stories. I grew up on fiction, first through having my parents read it to me, then listening to books on audio cassette tapes, and eventually I learned to read well enough that I could read books on my own. From the ages of approximately five to thirteen I was inseparable from books; I would often be in the middle of multiple series or even individual books at the same time. My intake of fiction was nearly ceaseless. The genre that I was partial to was young adult fantasy novels. Some of my favorites were: the Inheritance series, Harry Potter, the Ranger’s Apprentice series, and anything that Rick Riordan wrote for children.

The reason for so thoroughly explaining the amount of time I spent reading and what I read is that these stories provided me the basis with which I based much of my childhood on. As far back as I can remember I was playing imaginary games, occasionally by myself, but more frequently with my two younger brothers. We would spend hours at a time living in the world of whatever book I had most recently been reading (me being the oldest); obviously there were several favorites we would often return too. We would insert ourselves into the world and the story, not even pretending to be or to interact with the characters, but just living in the same world and facing similar challenges.  We would even take the story beyond one or two hours of playing, there were continuations of certain stories that would evolve and advance for weeks or months. This was how I spent just under a decade of my life. Although I never thought on it enough to define it, what I was doing was telling myself stories. It was never in a structured and deliberate manner where I would think “what kind of story am I going to make up today”. It was a far more organic process than that.

This is not something that I have done for the last five years. I don’t have a definitive reason as to why I ever did it in the first place, it was merely what I had the most fun doing. It is difficult to say why exactly I don’t do it anymore; there is no one reason that I no longer do this, but some combination of factors. It was inevitable that I eventually grew out of playing imaginary games with my brothers, and fighting Hell Hounds with sticks, but I think I held on a little longer than most people my age did. It was completely over by the time I began freshman year at my public high school (I was homeschooled until then), after becoming less and less a part of my life for around a year and a half. For a significant portion of time it certainly shifted to something that I did because both of my brothers immensely enjoyed doing, and that was an easy way to spend time with them. I was never ashamed of being thought childish, that wasn’t my motivation for stopping, and I just became involved in other things that required a time commitment that made it difficult to continue doing. There was never a singular moment where I decided that I was done with that portion of my life. It ended slowly and naturally as I matured and dedicated more time to things like academics and sports.

Despite the amount of time I used to spend playing imaginary games and telling myself stories, this is entirely a thing of the past in my life. I don’t do anything like it anymore and haven’t for several years. The biggest reason for why I stopped doing this when I did is because this is also the point in time that I stopped reading as much as I used to. Upon starting high school I have gone from a voracious reader to one that barely does assigned readings. I don’t know exactly why this is the case, beyond the relatively cop out answer that I don’t have the time (if I made the effort I certainly could find it). I will forever treasure the stories that I told myself and my brothers while I was a kid, but it is simply not a part of my life anymore.