Fun Size Bytes (from @Tj)

Win Some; Lose Some

~ One ~

The Boy and I had some time together today, so I took him to some of my favorite old places. The first was The Spare Time Shop which used to be the comic book store around. I don’t mean “the” as in “it was the best one” I mean “the” as in it was “the only one” back in the days before comics were cool. (Shut up.) If you were looking for comic books, or role playing games, or anything else that had to do with being a teenaged boy (99.9% of the time) with limited prospects of every getting laid, The Spare Time Shop was your place. Think of it like Cheers for nerds.

I’m amazed that it is still in business. Just about everything else in the same strip mall has changed from what it was “back then” except for the liquor store and The Spare Time Shop. I’ve driven past there for years, but it seemed like a good time to take The Boy, who is now 8. Maybe he’d find a comic book that he wanted to buy. Maybe it would become a “thing” for us to do together. At the very least we could try.

I opened the door and my heart sank. The Spare Time Shop is essentially dead, and in its place is a store devoted almost entirely to building models. Model planes, model cars, model whatevers. I built some models as a kid, but it was never something that really excited me.

I walked around the entire store and there was literally nothing that interested me. I let The Boy wander around on his own but he soon called for me, and said that he had looked at some cards (there was a small display of some kind of cards near the front door), but “there was nothing good.” He then added, “This place sure is dusty.”

True enough, son. True enough.

sigh Lose some.

~ Two ~

Since we still had some time, I took him to Annie’s Book Stop, a place that I used to frequent when I was a kid. For those who aren’t familiar (e.g. “most people”), Annie’s is a used bookstore. They are centered in New England but have many locations. Personally it’s something I associate with my Dad, who used to be able to walk there — and did, on a regular basis.

Dad loved to read. He was always reading at least one book, sometimes two, and I don’t think he ever missed a day of reading the newspaper. But, unlike most people I know, he didn’t keep books. When he was done reading a book, he’d put it into a brown paper bag from the grocery store, and when the bag started the fill up, he’d carry it to Annie’s. They would buy them — well, sort of; for your used books you’d received store credit towards the purchase of other used books. (Some of the stores are — or used to be — called “Annie’s Book Swap” to indicate this practice. Store credit was fine with Dad. He’d fill the same paper bag to carry home another batch of books, destined to be returned to Annie’s once they were read. He used it sort of like a library where he paid to keep the books for as long as he wanted.

In contrast, I’ve kept most books I’ve owned, and have trouble even thinking of getting rid of them. I know I probably won’t read or refer to most of them… so why am I keeping them? I’m not sure. They seem like little parts of me.

We pulled into Annie’s parking lot and I hoped that it wouldn’t disappoint. I opened the front door and the woman behind the cash register looked up from the book she was reading, smiled, and asked if we were looking for anything in particular. I said we were just looking, and she mentioned that kids books were in the back corner.

You could probably fit this Annie’s in the basement of most houses in the area. It’s small, but neat and clean. As I looked on the shelves I realized that the loose system of organization hadn’t changed much. “Look… Star Trek!” The Boy said, and I knew just which shelf to look at.

The Boy didn’t find anything there. I, of course, did.

Click image below to embiggen.

• Where The Sidewalk Ends (30th anniversary edition)
• Watchmen and Philosophy (Just because it looked interesting when I flipped through and read a few passages.)
• Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament (My brother, another avid reader, loves this author, Bart Ehrman. You may have seen him on The Colbert Report.)
• Hocus Pocus
• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (I read her book, The Writing Life, and have been wanting to read this ever since.)
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (I’ve been meaning to get this since it came out)
• Slaughterhouse-Five

(aside: please don’t tell Tony or Sniffy that I’ve never read any Vonnegut before now.)

Whereas last week I sat in Borders using their Wi-Fi to check Amazon.com for better prices, I didn’t even hesitate to buy these. Granted even the new ones (yes, it’s a used bookstore, but they sell some new books as well) were 15% off, but more importantly I want there to be places like Annie’s Book Shop around. The Boy may never frequent there, but maybe some other kid will. Maybe some twenty years younger me will find his way to Annie’s and find a way to connect with his Dad over books, even if they don’t always seem to have a lot to talk about.

Academically, The Boy reads very well. He excels at it for his age and seems to enjoy it, but it doesn’t seem to be a habit. I’d like it to be one, but I’m trying to figure out how to make it something he enjoys rather than something I want him to enjoy. He asked me today if I liked to read. That made me sad, because my answer to him was that I love to read, but he obviously doesn’t see it. Of course these days I do most of my reading on the computer screen, not with a book-in-hand. I’ve listened to more audiobooks than read actual paper books in the past 5 years, and most of the “actual books” were for school. Telling him I love to read isn’t enough, I know. I need him to see me enjoying to read. Towards that end, I bought Where the Sidewalk Ends and told him that I thought we could read it together.

While we were there, The Boy saw a Fitness For Dummies book. He said “I bet Lula—” (a character from several of the Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovich, which he and The Wife have listened to in the car) “—could use that book!” He said with a laugh. Lula is The Boy’s favorite character in all the world. She’s full-figu— no, she’s fat. And she wears too-small clothes. And she swears a lot. And he laughs and laughs. “I don’t know why, but every time Lula says a bad word it just cracks me up,” he recently told The Wife. He loves stories already, even if he’s used to them being delivered to him instead of having to work for them.

“Dad, why do you have one of those ‘Dummies’ books if you’re not a dummy?” he said, without a hint of either sarcasm or insincerity. And I love him for his sweetness and innocence. “Well, they use the word ‘dummies’ to mean ‘someone who doesn’t know a lot about a particular thing’… you can know a lot about some things but not know about other things and want to learn about them, and so people might buy one of those books… but I agree with you that I don’t like the name very much either.”

Win some.

~ Three ~

We had planned to meet my mom for lunch, and so we paid for the books and drove towards the restaurant, about 10 minutes away. As we approached, opposing traffic was stopped at a red light. I needed to turn left into a parking lot. The stopped cars had blocked my path. Since the road is only two lanes, this meant I was blocking everyone behind me.

After I was stopped for about 10 seconds, a woman next to me in the other lane saw that I was trying to get through. She pulled ahead so I might have enough room to slip through. It was going to be a tight fit and a sharp angle to get into the driveway, but there was just about enough room if I —

At which point the woman behind her pulled up right behind her, blocking the opening that had been created. She then proceeded to try to pretend she didn’t see me. I looked back over my shoulder to verify that the light was still red. It was. She had pulled ahead to block me from crossing in front of her, so she could sit in a line of traffic at a red light. She looked straight ahead, still acting as if I wasn’t there, now 30 seconds after being stopped next to me.

So I turned the car towards her, stopping when my bumper was about an inch from the side of her car, and my window was less than a foot from hers. “SERIOUSLY?” I yelled. “REALLY? YOU’RE GOING TO PRETEND YOU DON’T SEE ME HERE? YOU’RE JUST GOING TO SIT THERE AND BLOCK TRAFFIC AND PRETEND THAT EVERYONE HERE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT A —” and then I realized that I didn’t really want to finish that sentence with an 8 year old sitting behind me, so I changed it to “ARE YOU KIDDING ME? REALLY?”

She didn’t turn, she didn’t look, she gripped the wheel and stared straight ahead.

“THANK YOU VERY MUCH,” I said as the light changed. The man behind her waved me through and put his hands up as if to say “Whadya gonna do?” I repeated the gesture as if to say “Can you believe that?” and then gave him a thank-you wave.

Mom arrived about 10 minutes later, and I recounted the story to her.

“With your son in the car?” she said.

“I didn’t use any inappropriate words,” I replied.

“Was it scary?” she asked The Boy.

“Nah,” he said.

“See!?” I said.

“Besides,” he continued, both nonchalantly and completely unnecessarily, “I’m used to it…”

“You might have quit while I was ahead,” I said. I pulled his head and neck towards me at a 45º angle, kissed him on the head, and then pushed his head away so he could sit up again. He looked at me and grinned. I rolled my eyes and made an exaggerated “What am I going to do with you?” sigh.

Lose some.

~ Four ~

It’s 3 a.m. as I write these words, which won’t be published until 12:15 p.m. in the hopes that someone might read it, even though it’s “tl;dr” territory. I’m leaving the iPad plugged in tonight, and although I probably won’t be awake for too much longer, I’m taking a book with me to bed.

Win some.