So. Twice a year the local elementary school has a Book Fair set up in the school library, and Your Humble Blogger goes and purchases books. In a general sort of way, the rundown is like this: my Perfect Non-Reader goes with her class to the sale and fills out a Wish List of three to five titles. YHB and my Best Reader receive the list, mock the Perfect one for her execrable taste, and loudly announce that we will not be purchasing any of the books on the list whatsoever. This is not believed. We then go in and purchase most of the books on her list as well as three or four YA novels that look good. The books are half-off cover price, and the school gets a piece of it, so we feel virtuous about spending money, and then we get the books at the end of it, so there’s that. After school that day, we grudgingly admit to having purchased one or two of the books on the list and hand them over to the Perfect Non-Reader, sometimes holding one back for an upcoming gift-giving occasion or airplane travel.
This year, the wish list was full of Pokemon crud, and we were very nearly serious about not purchasing it at all. And then it turned out that it was all sold out when we got there; Pokemon is very big, still, amongst Central Connecticut second-graders. Or something. Anyway, we went ofer the wish list this year, utterly by accident. We did purchase some stuff for the kid, and a book for the Youngest Member too, which we have read to him thirty thousand times since then. At least he likes it. We bought a thing or two, and a couple of other things, and then we were done and I paid and that was it.
And then I was browsing a little longer, because I was volunteering and it was the waning hours of the sale with no small ones purchasing goofy pencils with twenty nickels, and I picked up Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat. And I thought to myself, boychick, I thought (taking the liberty as I’ve known myself since way back), you’ve already finished buying things. You’re done for the day. Put it back. And then I bought it, of course, and read it, and it was lovely.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.