Listen Up - Part 4

This week is all things audio. I’ve already talked about my early ruse to memorize books in order to trick people into thinking I could read. I’ve talked about my discovery of audiobooks and how they completely redefined my childhood. And I’ve talked about how I listened to my text books on fast forward during college. So what happened when I graduated from college? Shockingly, I quit RFB&D. I decided to stop listening.

I went totally cold turkey. No audio books period. I didn’t have proffessors expecting me to read 100 pages by tommorrow. If I wanted to read a book for fun, I could suck it up and read it. I’m glad that I forced myself to do this. By the time I graduated from college I’d listened to thousands of audio books and had a very deep seeded love of literature. So I finally bit the bullet and truly forced myself to learn how to read.

But what were my ears supposed to do while I was reading. I’d been plugged into audio books for my entire life. I’d trained myself to not simple hear, but actually memorize texts rattled off on fast forward. I couldn’t just turn my ears off. They were to keyed into everything around me.

The first thing I did was find NPR. I needed to hear words, to dedicate a section of my brain to memorizing facts at the same time as I was busy doing differential equations. Oh yeah, did I mension that one year after I graduate from college I went back to college. My first degree was in anthropology. My second was in civil engineering. I didn’t have RFB&D to help me out in engineering school, so I didn’t bother reading any of those text books. I just listened in class and flipped through my text books for example problems while doing my homework.

On top of considering all things, I also started listening to a lot more music. There are currently 5000 songs on my iPod. It’s not like I hated music before that. I had a couple hundred CD’s back before MP3s became the rage. But once the audio books went dead, I found the silence overwellming. So I filled it with any sound I could find.

Eventually I gave up. Just over a year ago I put an end to my audio books ban. I haven’t re-upped my RFB&D membership. Instead I’ve found Library’s 2 Go. Library audiobooks downloaded directly to my iPod. Can someone say awesome. Yeah, there is a reason I’ve listened to about 150 books in the past year. But I’ll talk more about that tommorow.

Joke of the Day

What does Santa call his wife on his tax return?

A Dependent Clause.