It was just a normal day in Lando Mines. I was three years old and out in the yard, which had no grass...just hard pan dirt. Made it easy to mow I guess. I often was out there since I loved being outdoors in the sun whenever I could. I was on a mission, or more like a hunt. I had a condition known as Rickets. It's just a vitamin D deficiency, but caused soft bones in kids like me. Somehow my little brain knew I was missing something in my diet, and I made a very bad assumption that eating coal was the magic cure.
Not just any coal mind you, but only some very particular coal. I learned from experience the difference between bituminous coal and anthracite coal. Bituminous coal is an ideal snack food. Soft enough to have a nice crunch to it, but not so soft that it would smear and leave a telltale trace on your fingers or lips. And it is essentially a zero fat, zero calorie snack - but very filling. Anthracite is a very different story. It was hard, and shiny and nearly impossible to break up by chewing. It was mostly only good for serving as a poor imitation for a jaw breaker, or for throwing at birds.
So, I ate soft coal whenever I could find it. My mom was not a big fan of that habit, and I'd get in trouble whenever she caught me doing it, but I felt compelled to eat it. I got really good at casually sneaking up on a small piece of coal on the ground, taking a good look around to be sure that I wasn't being watched, and then quickly popping it into my mouth. I'd savor it for a moment, and then set to work grinding it into a black slurry that I could swallow.
I didn't understand Mother Nature's Law of Inedibles back then. When something inedible goes in, it must back come out - eventually. Coal doesn't digest well. In fact, it seemed to transform into some kind of black concrete as it wove it's merry way through my stomach and intestines. The end product strongly resembled charcoal briquettes. You can imagine how difficult it would be to pass that...you get the general idea? So, I was one of the most constipated creatures on mother earth.
My mom's idea of potty training was a bit off the norm. She spread newspapers on the back porch, and when I needed to go, that's where I'd go. Me and my dog were very familiar with that place. Actually, it worked pretty well until winter time, and then I got very motivated to figure out the whole bathroom thing.
So, whenever the urge hit me, I'd go to back porch and wait for what seemed an eternity for something to happen. As I whiled away the time waiting for my own little coal mine to finish it's business, I would look at the newspapers. At first I would just look at the pictures, but then I started to notice all the squiggly stuff that surrounded the pictures. Since my mom was a teacher, she showed me a couple of words like "the" and "a", so I'd spend my time trying to find them on the papers as I squatted there. The more words I learned, the more I wanted to know, and so my interest in reading was born. I'm not saying I wouldn't have been an avid reader anyway, but for sure eating coal got me interested at a very early age.
Lessons learned: You are what you eat, especially when you can't get it out no matter how hard you try. Sometimes good habits are born out of bad ones.
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