Today is Tolkien’s birthday. Facebook reminded me that, seven years ago today, I posted a personal story about how I found out The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. I thought of sharing here on Boing Boing.
I vividly remember the awkward way I was introduced to JRR Tolkien. It was the 10th grade and a friend of mine had just read The Hobbit and I was alarmingly excited about it. He couldn’t stop barking about it and practically demanded that I march to the school library and check. So, during my lunch break, I went to the library, checked it out and started reading right there.
I immediately got lost in it, to the point of actually going to the wrong class for the next period. I entered the room, sat at my usual table and buried my head in the book. A few minutes later, I realized that the people around me were looking and laughing. I looked up and saw that I was in the right room, but at the wrong time. I quickly left for more laughter and mockery.
I joined the Tolkien cult that day and became as fanatical as my friend. I read The Hobbit in maybe two days, the trilogy started and swallowed everything in record time. The second time, I ate much more slowly.
A few years later, when I was living in the Twin Oaks community and dealing with the early onset of spinal arthritis, I was trying every crazy cure alternative I could find, desperate for any form of relief. One of these treatments consisted of daily baths of Epsom salt in high doses, in scalding water. Remove toxins, they said.
It was like a form of torture. The water boiled me red like a lobster and the magnesium sulfate polluted the breathable air around the bathtub (it was for you to dive as deeply as possible). My head hovered over the water’s surface and there was basically no good air below. I was very dizzy and the sulfurous stench and the strong smell of the salt were nauseating. So, to keep me entertained while I went through this daily ordeal, a friend of mine who was also a Tolkien nerd read me the entire trilogy while sitting on the toilet seat next to the bathtub.
Jim was much more fanatical than I was and had memorized the Elven passages, knew the proper Elven pronunciation and even knew the melodies of the songs in the books (and sang them to me). It was a profound experience and an indelible memory. I was completely stoned by the somewhat hellish conditions of the bath, I lost my mind, and this incredibly beautiful and well-presented prose floated above the caustic cloud that filled our small community farmhouse bathroom.
If I close my eyes now, I can almost hear Jim’s reading voice and elven singing. And smell the Epsom salt. Too much Epsom salt.
Image: JRR Tolkien cover for The Hobbit.