Recipe for a Good Night Out
4 x thirty somethings
2 x tents
1 x campfire
1 x hamper of home cooked nosh
0 x alcohol
Take four young adults
Bus them down to Brittas Bay, County Wicklow
Erect two tents
Send them all for a swim
Light a campfire
Feed them
Now what?
We’re all used to instant entertainment so it’s hard to switch off and be still. Eoin could probably have fallen asleep early; Sam could have sat in an impossible yoga position and sucked her toes; Jessica could have read her book; but Angelo was bored. “Now what? There’s nothing to do!”
Jessica reached into her backpack, pulled
out The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart and started reading aloud. She read an entire chapter as a gentle breeze flapped against the open tents. Her audience lay down, listening to this adult bed time story. She read until the sky darkened and turned to dusk, until her three listeners had almost fallen asleep, while they relived their own private memories of being read to as a child.
2 x tents
1 x campfire
1 x hamper of home cooked nosh
0 x alcohol
Take four young adults
Bus them down to Brittas Bay, County Wicklow
Erect two tents
Send them all for a swim
Light a campfire
Feed them
Now what?
We’re all used to instant entertainment so it’s hard to switch off and be still. Eoin could probably have fallen asleep early; Sam could have sat in an impossible yoga position and sucked her toes; Jessica could have read her book; but Angelo was bored. “Now what? There’s nothing to do!”
Jessica reached into her backpack, pulled
out The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart and started reading aloud. She read an entire chapter as a gentle breeze flapped against the open tents. Her audience lay down, listening to this adult bed time story. She read until the sky darkened and turned to dusk, until her three listeners had almost fallen asleep, while they relived their own private memories of being read to as a child.Labels: bedtime stories, Jessica, reading aloud, The Dice Man
3 Comments:
Way cool! I love this. I love to share books this way. My husband and I do it often. You can't get him to read a book on his own, but will tolerate being read to. We read all the Harry Potter books together, and a few of Stephen King's. I remember the first time I read aloud to him, it was Watch for Me on the Mountain, the story of the Apache chief, Geronimo, by Forrest Carter. We were driving out of the Rockies, and into the New Mexico and Arizona deserts, crying. Both of us. We couldn't have chosen a better book for the trip.
I can't think of a better way to share than to read out loud. One man told me he read the newspapers to his baby daughter who listened intently to every word.
It's like you were there. Although I stumbled through the words and missed my place more than a couple of times, they kept listening and the fire kept cracking. x x x 14
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