The Book on the Dashboard, Ten Pages at a Time While Waiting to Load

The book sat on the dashboard for two years.

A paperback, nearly as thick as my hand, bought by my wife for my forty-fifth birthday. The sun through the windshield had bleached one patch of the spine, and a corner of the cover had curled up like a rice paper left out in the yard. Every week I wiped the dashboard, wiped around it, and never once opened it.

I am forty-seven, and I drive a truck carrying everyday goods from one warehouse to another, around Saigon and a few provinces of the Mekong Delta. This job has one thing outsiders rarely think about: waiting. Waiting for your turn to load, waiting for the warehouse gate to open, waiting for someone to finish the paperwork. Some days I sit in the yard for two hours, some days nearly four, the engine off, the window down a crack, flies buzzing around a plastic cup that still smells of iced coffee.

One afternoon Tín, my helper, poked his head into the cab.

"Anh Sáu, have you read that book yet?"

"No."

"Two years now."

"I know. Go get the paperwork."

He grinned and left. I stayed where I was, looking at the book, my face a little hot, the way you feel when you have been caught.

This story is not here to persuade anyone to read. Reading is not above watching clips, and plenty of afternoons in the loading yard I watch clips and enjoy them, nothing to fix there. I only want to tell one small thing: how I opened the book after two years, and where I almost quit.

The afternoon the phone died in the yard

That day my phone died at three o'clock. I had left the charger at home, and the power bank was lent to Tín. The warehouse said two trucks ahead of mine, about an hour and a half. I sat listening to the air conditioner of the truck next to me humming along, looking at a dashboard with nothing on it but the book.

I opened the first page. Read a paragraph, then read it again because I could not remember what I had just read. Every word was familiar, every sentence made sense, but my eyes kept slipping along like a motorbike on a wet road. Getting through the first page took almost four minutes. At school I used to read ten pages in that time.

I shut the book.

The easy explanation is that I am old, I stopped too long ago, and I can no longer read. But sitting in the hot cab with the little fan turning, I felt the difficulty was somewhere else. I had set the book a goal: finish it, four hundred pages. Looking at how thick it was, every time I opened it I felt like I was standing at the back of a queue, and the first page felt like being graded. The words were not hard. What weighed on me was the feeling of sitting an exam that nobody had scheduled.

So I tried changing exactly one thing. No more reading to finish, just ten pages. When the ten were done I would stop, even if it was getting good. I tore an old delivery slip in half to use as a bookmark.

The first time, ten pages took nearly half an hour, I dozed off twice, and I reread one paragraph three times. I left the yard unable to remember the characters' names. But I remembered sitting alone in the truck, hearing a spoon clink against a glass at the café across the road, and not having to worry about anyone calling. Many people I know say reading gets harder at this age, and some say it is as easy as when they were young. I belong to the first group.

Where I almost quit

In the second week there was an afternoon when I fell asleep on page three. I woke up to Tín knocking on the window, saying it was my turn. I climbed out feeling sour in my stomach. All I could think was: if this is how I read, I might as well not read.

That evening I sat on the step in front of the house and my wife brought out a glass of tea.

"What is wrong with you?"

"I fell asleep reading. I cannot even manage ten pages."

"You drive all day, so dozing off over a book in the afternoon is normal, no?"

"Normal, but it feels pathetic."

She said nothing more, just sat down beside me. I looked at the worn edge of the step and saw that I was asking for something odd: to read slowly and fast at the same time, to be tired and wide awake at the same time.

The most tempting move right then was to raise the standard. I thought maybe I should read at dawn when I was fresh, or take notes on each chapter to remember it. It sounded serious, and what it really did was make reading heavier one more time. I did the opposite and lowered the bar: five minutes counts. Opening the book, reading one page, closing it counts. If I fall asleep, I wake up, mark where I was, and call it done for that afternoon.

The week after, the book was still there, but with a bookmark

By the third week the book no longer lay untouched on the dashboard. The delivery slip sat around page sixty. Some days I read all ten pages, some days three, some days I only opened it, looked, and remembered I was tired. I kept no numbers. I only remember one afternoon with the sun slanting through the windshield, laying a yellow streak across the page, and reading a whole paragraph without thinking that I was reading.

I also noticed that waiting to load was no longer dead time. It was still waiting, like ninety seconds at a red light, only now my hands had somewhere to go.

What I learned was not that I read well again. Some things I can only do when I move the faraway goal out of sight and do one thing at a time. And as for resting in the middle of a long day without feeling guilty, I am still learning that, in the spirit of permitting yourself to rest without guilt.

If you try it and the book stays shut

It can happen, and there are two reasons I have met often. One is that the book does not suit you: the print is small and tires your eyes, or it is a book someone gave you that you never wanted to read. A gift does not have to be finished. Switching to a thinner one, or listening to someone read instead of reading yourself, is also a way. The other is that the yard is too noisy to settle, in which case pick the café across the road, or read at home after dinner.

For drivers in particular, I will say one thing plainly. If you get sleepy even while sitting behind the wheel, or tired for many weeks even after resting, then this is no longer about a reading habit. Pull over somewhere safe whenever you feel drowsy, and talk with a professional. If this approach does not suit you another might, but that matter should not wait.

The book still sits on the dashboard, the spine still bleached in one patch. The only difference is that a delivery slip now marks page ninety-something, and when the truck stops in the yard, I know which way my hand will go.