Read the excerpt from Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.

Unable to sleep, I resigned myself to await his return by counting states. Miss Crocker had had a big thing about states, and I sometimes found that if I pretended that she was naming them off I could fall asleep. I decided to count the states geographically rather than alphabetically; that was more of a challenge.

How best could a reader make a text-to-self connection for this excerpt?