About Me-The Early Years

In the small Ohio town of Logan, located by surrounding hills and state/metro parks about an hour Southeast of the capital Columbus, Laura Michelle Summers lived most of her life. She was born in her birthtown of Lawton, Oklahoma on April 7, 1986 on an army base, and moved to her hometown of Logan, Ohio nearly a year later. The date coincided with many historical events, such as the World Health Day Proclamation 5454 by U.S. president Ronald Reagan, and the Pacific Center for the Book Arts sponsored a lecture on "Research and Rediscovery of Medieval Vellum" given by Benjamin Vorst in Southern California. However, these events bear no relation to the newborn Oklahoma native and Ohioan hometown girl. Laura was named after her great-aunt Laura of her mother's family who died of breast cancer at a young age. At the age of 18 months, Laura fell from her nursery window down two stories on a sunny day, landing on their Orchard Street gravel drive and sustaining a skull fracture. No operation was necessary, and the family moved to a one-story house out of town and into rural Southeastern Ohio, across from the Johnson farm.

At the age of 4, Laura attended the First Presbyterian Pre-School where she often wore a jumper with a picture of a cactus and participated in her first parade on Halloween dressed as an angel.
At the age of 5, Laura underwent a tonsillectomy while simultaneously having her third eye surgery, the last of them, performed to correct her weak eye muscles and stave off crossed eyes. Enrolled in Green Elementary School's Kindergarten at the time, just before Christmas, Laura's older sister and only sibling, Kristen Summers Hatfield, invited the neighborhood kids over for a well-wishing party before Laura's operations. She arrived home just in time for St. Nick, and went back to Kindergarten in the new year.
By first grade, it was determined that Laura would be left-handed; there was nothing to be done. She was introduced to her lifelong-loved author Roald Dahl when her teacher, Mrs. Mace, read with the class James and the Giant Peach, as well as The Witches.
Her life goal in third grade was to read all of the books on the classroom shelves. She succeeded over halfway through the year, even reading the ones with plain covers, which were discovered to be the best yet (i.e. Tuck Everlasting). She then set out on a lifelong goal to read all of the books in the world. She also cheated for the first, and last, time on a math test given by her teacher, Mrs. Veidt. Guilt-driven, she wrote her teacher a letter the next day, hand-delivered before recess, and spent her time allotted for physical exertion re-taking the math test on which she scored higher without cheating. This was the first discovery of Laura's unfounded lack of confidence in many of her capabilities.

In Fourth Grade, still keen on reading all of the books of the world, Laura discovered human eroticism in the Sweet Valley High series and human fear in the Goosebumps series by R. L. Stine. The Sweet Valley Highs were parent-approved, the Goosebumps were school-approved. Fifth grade offered the first real taste of futility when books she'd read for pleasure in grades 1-3 were being reread in class. Her exasperation drives her to keep a book log, where she logs every book she reads from then on, how many times it was read, and key elements included, such as main characters, plot, etc. This is also her approved-by-pediatricians tomboy stage of life, when long hair only tangled.