Michael D. Davis.

I’ve read books. I’ve written books. I love books, but I haven’t always.

I grew up in a family of readers, in a house where if you trip, often enough, it was a paperback underfoot. My ma read many subjects while mainly focusing on crime. If there’s any piece of literature that has a section dedicated to a dismemberment, my mother’s eyes have probably graced its pages.

My father’s genres were war and self-help, I assume because it’s in combat that you can really win friends and influence people. Fantasy was always my sister’s purview, from wizards in cloaks to werewolves with bad hygiene. Being the intellectual that I am, I chose books with more pictures than words, if I read at all.

When I was a chubby cheeked snot nosed youngin, reading was a chore, a burden. It was something I did when my Ma told me to, and usually not even then. I would put the book in front of me and stare at the page, memorizing the pictures and purposely neglecting the words. If a word or sentence did slip into my view, I hastily averted my eyes, reprimanding myself for the blunder.

Only a few books that my ma read to me in my rugrat years made any impression. One that worked its magic was “Robert the Rose Horse” by Joan Heilbroner and P.D. Eastman, a tale about a horse with an unfortunate allergy and a sneeze that could crack the foundation of the Chrysler Building.

This one probably spoke to me because of my own allergies and penchant for sneezing. I was around five years old when I first let off a sneeze so deafening that a flock of birds dropped dead from neighboring trees.

My ma tried relentlessly as I grew to convert me into a bookworm. Which I was, to some degree, carrying around pocket editions of “The Far Side,” “Peanuts,” and “Mad” Magazine. One tactic that my ma reused, again and again, was to say after every good movie or tv show, “Ya know, it was probably based on a book. They usually are.”

Now you are probably saying to yourself, “Is this dude ever gonna read a book? I’m four paragraphs into this column, and he’s still dang near illiterate.”

So I’ll jump right to it. I can’t remember how I found them, but I can remember the stories. It was the discovery of two authors that reformed me on the written word — Edgar Allan Poe in middle school and Mickey Spillane in high school. Two used dime store paperbacks, and I haven’t been the same since.

Michael D. Davis, an STC graduate who lives in Toledo, is a correspondent and cartoonist for the Tama-Toledo News-Chronicle.