Now that he’s faced with a teenage girl obsessed with makeup, hair, and clothes, he’s starting to get nostalgic for my adolescence.

I’m sorry your dad wasn’t supportive. I can totally relate to viewing a trip across the street as a perfectly acceptable excuse to get some reading done!

Like you, I read all the time as a child. My mother was a big reader too; we’d often eat dinner together with books in our hands. I only stopped reading at school (with the book held surreptitiously under the desk) when I started missing important information.

My dad (my parents were divorced) strongly discouraged my obsession with reading. He was especially annoyed when I wanted to read at the dinner table, during short car rides, and while crossing the street.

And I’ve never been seasick a day in my life.

I’m okay with not being able to read in the car, though. I enjoy staring out the window and talking to my husband and listening to music. Sometimes I knit (though easy stuff not requiring a pattern).

I can’t see how speedreading would have anything to do with it. My brother and my parents are slow readers & their eyesight is just as bad as mine. My ability to read quickly is something that happens in my head. I don’t have a technique that I follow or anything. My brain can process words quickly, that’s all.

I do get car sick, usually on winding mountain roads, even if I am driving. But I got used to the small motions of the car, similar to getting over seasickness in rougher seas. Practice, experience.

I think the PSA’s were about the fact that when you start reading, there is likely to be a noticeable amount of strain in the muscles around the eye. Some people equate eye strain to loss of vision, thus the Public Service Announcement. This is similar to the ‘reading by dim light will ruin your eyes’. Simple eye exercises, such as Dr. Gottlieb’s ‘Presbyopia Reduction’ exercises and the ‘palming and sunning’ exercises relax the eyes and tighten and firm the muscles and increase control of the eye muscles, resulting in reduced eye strain and often better vision.

Remember the stories of Lincoln studying by candle light or oil lamp or some such? I never heard that President Lincoln went blind.

It might be interesting to find if speed reading made one more susceptible to motion sickness or eye strain.

But I managed to train myself to be able to read on the bus in college. I lived at home and took city buses to campus, 45 min. one way, and I was an English major! I had to!! I think my muscle memory learned what to expect–turn, then down the hill, then a stop, etc.

I remember hearing a PSA saying it’s bad for the eyes to read in a moving vehicle, but they didn’t say why.