I wore my cousin’s out-of-style hand-me-downs (I’m still traumatized by the memory of a pair of turquoise pleated polyester pants with a matching check button-down shirt, worn about the same time that my peers discovered acid washed jeans and off-the-shoulder T-shirts). I volunteered at the local library, for fun. I was a lonely child - too smart-alecky and goody-two-shoes for my own good, the kind of socially inept kid that lurks around the edges of the playground wondering why no one invites them to play. At the very least, I exhausted the ample offerings of the Menlo Park Public Library. Dahl published more than three dozen books during his lifetime, and although I failed to read them all, I made a champion effort. When I discovered that the adult section of the library also had a whole shelf of Roald Dahl short story collections, I checked these out too. Fox before moving on to more obscure fare like The BFG and The Witches and The Twits. I tore through Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach and Fantastic Mr. (See: Stephen King, Ayn Rand, Philip Roth.) This was just the beginning of a lifetime of compulsive reading behavior, wherein I would grow enamored with an author and thrash my way through their entire bibliography, before suddenly growing sick of them and dropping them, often forever. WHEN I WAS TEN - or thereabouts - I decided to read everything that Road Dahl had ever written. Absolutely Squiffling: Growing Up with Roald Dahl
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