Reading Goosebumps books in which the protagonists are always 12 years old got me thinking about that age. It’s marked by a single experience.

Sometime near the end of the sixth grade school year, we were all lounging about in class, including the teacher. It was late in the school day. The distinct orange glare of the afternoon sun bathed the classroom in that hazy light that makes it hard to concentrate on classwork anyway.

Most students were just hanging out and chatting, which does feel like the kind of rare opportunity any kid would take advantage of when most of class is structured and quiet. But for some reason, I decided it was a good time to sit and read a book. I can’t tell you what had me so engrossed but I was truly gone in this book, having developed this ability to shut out the world and focus on the story in front of me. I sat there reading and failed to notice that the classroom had suddenly gone quiet. They sat enraptured as a girl whose name I forget approached me, slowly it seems, waited for the right moment, then briefly sat on my lap before exploding into laughter along with everyone else in the class. She blushed and got up right away, but the laughter rolled on, including from my teacher’s desk. Besides a sense of shock in the moment, I don’t remember my own reaction. I can only assume I put the book away and whiled away the rest of the afternoon until class was over.

Not coincidentally, I remember losing interest in reading books around then and through all of middle school. I don’t know if this experience really made me stop reading, but I’m sure it was a brick in the wall built mostly by puberty.