The librarians at Green Run Elementary School had a rule.
The Five Finger Rule.
If a student wanted to check out a book beyond their grade level, they had to open the book to a random page and read from it. Any time they came to a word they didn’t know, they had to hold up a finger. Once they reached five, the student had to put the book back on the shelf.
Dillon, one of my childhood neighborhood friends, was reading a book one day when my brother, Justin, and I went to his house. The book series was growing rapidly in popularity (there may have been at least one movie out), and it would become the greatest selling series of all time.
It was, of course, Harry Potter.
If memory serves, Dillon was deep into The Goblet of Fire. I listened, rapt as he and Justin passionately discussed the book.
I wanted in.
Dillon sat with me that day––I think it was just the once––and we read a page or two together.
I really wanted in.
The next day at Green Run’s library, I grabbed The Sorcerer’s Stone. I was aware of the Rule, knew due to the sticker on its cover that this book was beyond my first grade reading level, so I kept the book gripped tight at my side.
I don’t recall trying to check it out. Maybe I was going to keep going until I was out of the library with the rest of the class, but those gates at the exit would have beeped and blinked and turned my face as red as the flashes of the alarm.
I must have walked up to the checkout counter like I was stealing the book right in front of the librarian’s eyes.
She pulled me aside.
I was nervous. The book was slipping away. It was in my hands but already gone.
“Open it up,” she said.
I think it was some page with Hagrid at his hut. I gave it the old elementary try. I even skipped over a few unfamiliar words without putting up a finger.
As I worked down the page, finger after finger rising with greater hesitation, I knew I was delaying the inevitable. I wouldn’t be able to leave with the book. I wouldn’t pass this test.
By the end of the page, my hand was open, prepared to cover my shame.
The librarian watched it all unfold, and as she took the book into her arms, she offered ideas for other books.
There was one problem, however, which prevented me from accepting a single recommendation.
I only wanted Harry Potter.
I left the library crushed.
Luckily, I had a mother who took my siblings and me to the public library.
Sometime following this incident, while I was still a Green Run student, I found out that books were recorded for people that preferred to listen to them. This included the very books I wanted to read.
My first audiobook, checked out from a public library, was on six cassette tapes. Before I started using a portable handheld cassette player paired with wired, foam-pad headphones, I used my mom’s old radio boombox, long and narrow with speakers built in at either side.
I pressed the eject button on top, and one of two slots glided open. I removed the first tape from The Sorcerer’s Stone box. I made sure whoever had these tapes before had done their duty and rewound the magnetic tape to the left side. It wasn’t uncommon to rewind the tape regardless to ensure it started at the very beginning.
I slid the first tape in, pushed the slot closed, rewound and pressed play.
What happened next was pure magic.
I heard, for the first time, the voice that to this day brings me the purest nostalgia I’ve ever experienced. The simple, playful notes of the intro music and then, from the midst of the melody, one of the greatest narrators there is.
Jim Dale.
To accompany my listening, I also checked out the book, which I read alongside the narration. Jim Dale was my guiding voice through every book, giving life to every character, as I followed, turning every page.
I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
I was completely in.
And Those to Come
In August 2005, one of my birthday gifts from my mother was the audiobook for The Half-Blood Prince. Cassette tapes were clunking their way out. CDs were sliding their way in.
Around the time I started my Bachelor’s degree at ODU, I replaced music in my car with audiobooks on CD that I checked out at various Hampton Roads libraries.
Before I started my MFA, I subscribed to Audible. I now stream all of my audiobooks through my iPhone.
I’ve listened to the Harry Potter series at least three times.
My wife and I have been together for almost nine years. We’ve been married for three. It wasn’t until she said she didn’t know the difference between Dobby and Gollum that I realized how much I’ve failed as a partner. I’ve never laughed so hard, nor have I wanted to cry more.
We’ll get to The Lord of the Rings, but for now, we are working our way through Harry Potter.
Once again, Jim Dale has entered my life. We listened to the first three books on our drive from Virginia to Oregon. Now we are preparing to make the trip back.
The Goblet of Fire awaits.
Much has changed in the technology of audiobooks, but that same magic is there in the voice and narration of Jim Dale, in the story of the boy who lived, and it remains both the cornerstone of my love for books and a touchstone to my reading life.
Onward and upward,
Lee
