Choose Your Own Adventure

After ten at night in 2007, at the end of my story presentation on San Antonio Hill, I discovered that my suitcase had been stolen. He had left it along with other things at the back of the stage, within reach of anyone, and the thieves took it. It distressed me quite a bit. I looked everywhere for some miraculous clue and was able to find, on the road that goes down to Fifth Street, some loose sheets of paper that I kept in one of my pockets. The inventory of what was stolen was summarized in two notebooks, one with studies on Christian theology and the other with drafts of stories; an MP3 recorder, my wallet with documents, the suitcase and a book, one of the first I read. I remember trying to follow the trail left, like in the story Hansel and Gretel, but the leaves were few and after two blocks all signs disappeared and I lost hope of recovering my things.

Evaluating the situation, I concluded that there was no possibility of recovering the notes in the notebooks, nor the audio recordings, but the rest could be replaced. After two months I already had a better recorder, a new backpack, a notebook and a wallet with new documents. The stolen book, on the other hand, turned out to be the most difficult to obtain.

After the discovery came the days when I lamented my bad luck. The stolen book had been unread for several years, walking through my library among many other copies and just that day I saw it and put it in my backpack so that someone else could steal it at night. The pain of the loss lay in the following: when I was eight years old, a literature teacher had given it to me, not one who had taught me, but a family friend. And I felt upset, because the theft eliminated the object that was tied to the memory.

The subject of the book generated an intense search. From asking so much in the bookstores in the city center, I ended up making friends with a bookseller who hunted for texts already read, without charging anything, just for the pleasure of guaranteeing other people's readings. Fernando: a tall man, always smiling, with a well-marked Cali accent.

-- Fernando, do you already know something about Journey inside the UFO 54.40?

"Nothing, but I'm here for this," and he pointed to the point of his index finger.

The difficulty was that the Editorial Atlantida of Buenos Aires stopped printing this type of texts, which were a success in the 80's, but which no longer represented much to them. Mine was part of a collection of "choose your own adventure" books, game books where the reader can choose the destiny of their protagonist because, in the long run, the protagonist is the same.

I told them that when I was eight years old I received the book as a gift, but assessing its importance involves considering some previous moments. When I was younger, I had a crotch itch in the middle of a gala ceremony and it caused damage at all times: an unbearable creature. My mother, to read in peace, would put me on her lap and interpose the books of her favorite to prevent me from any escape. Together with her I ended up reading books on personal improvement, some that I still have in my memory. I still remember the magical biplane from the book Illusions by Richard Bach and the mysterious old man from the Greatest Miracle in the World by Og Mandino.

Fortunately, the "reader imprisonment" strategy changed and my mother played something different. When she noticed that I liked to read, she asked her teacher friend for advice and that's how she received the stolen book as a gift. Yes, I also remember that I abandoned it after going through all its pages and jumped to other books. Some time later, an exchange of readings took place inside my house, my mother reading her books and I reading mine, then we shared each other's progress. I continued with Julio Verne, with his Mysterious Island and from there I moved on to the science fiction stories of Asimov, all without leaving home. The truth is that school could have been the best setting to enhance my literary knowledge, but I never got hooked there. The readings suggested by the literature teachers were terrible, I only liked The Little Prince and I will count as torture, to leave my voice of protest, the inaccessible Cantar del mio Cid.

-- Fernando, do you know anything about the book? -- I told him on the phone.

-- Yes, come here and bring twenty thousand pesos.

-- Twenty thousand?

-- Yes, twenty.

Another story was my initial relationship with writing. As a student I did and wrote what they asked of me and there was no free appointment with the lyrics. I also don't remember when I started to recognize the code to formulate my own sentences. I owe writing by my own decision, free writing, to my teenage girlfriends. They opened my first texts in which I tried to order words looking for something of beauty. It was only until he was twenty that he awoke a real concern for writing fiction, specifically stories.

At first it was very difficult to write, I was slow to understand, or at least more so than now. Everything without accents, he didn't know about times, voice assignments, he wrote streams of disorganized words, chaos. The biggest barrier to overcome was in the basic education he had received. I studied at an industrial technical school and knew more about tools than grammar. A cast iron, a tap, a hammer, a caliper, a shear, a lathe... I went through a thousand workshops, but none for writing. And I had to advance alone in creating fictions and discovering that it required more judicious planning of the stories. Then I started writing, organizing and wondering how some texts worked. Then I started studying a Bachelor's degree in Literature and became a teacher.

-- Fernando? See, it's hard for me to go today, but save the book for me until Monday when I pick up the money this weekend.

-- Ready, I'll keep the book for you here. If you want, tell me and I'll take it to the Hill.

-- No, I'm going to the bookstore, so we can go to the landline.

I had told Fernando the story that involved my search and he had especially joined the cause. That's why he also responded excitedly and when I told him that I was thinking of writing a book with multiple endings for adults, he committed to giving him an autographed copy. That's what happens with good books. In my case, when I find a book that I like, the inevitable impulse arises to start writing, it is like a reflex.

-- Fernando! Go, I'm going for UFO 54, 40.

-- Ready, I'll wait for you here. Let him know, I'm already selling that book. You haven't come for a month now and the moth is eating it.

-- Nothing, shake it so the moth can endure hunger.

As soon as he entered the bookstore he took out six books and put them on the counter; Above all was the one of my memories. How exciting to know that the mission is complete!

-- Look what the moth did, it multiplied them!

-- Fercho, I don't have one hundred and twenty thousand pesos now!

-- No, man, I'll leave them all to you at twenty, because in the end I have nothing to do with what the moth did. "You bring me yours when you finish it," he said smiling.

Reading and writing become knotted in me daily because of the pleasure they give me. Regarding writing, I must say that it also represents professional importance. The written text serves to protect your work from those who want to worship laziness and make money from the creative efforts of others. I learned to protect my voice with lyrics, supported by the virtues of the computer and its dangers when writing.

I became a fan of game books. The strategy of reading while playing had seemed excellent to me from the beginning and as a child it had helped me increase the pace of reading. Now as an adult I think about the importance of sharing books with children in a fun way, I reflect on how relevant it is to teach that you can read and play at the same time.

Today I have in my hands five books with multiple endings, but not the one mentioned in this story. Some time ago I met an eleven-year-old boy and gave him my Journey inside the UFO 54, 40, thinking of offering him what that teacher knew how to give me so many years ago: the pleasure of reading while playing.