a little faith in humanity was restored 5 minutes ago.

So I’m sitting at my desk, and this eleven year old who I’ve never met before comes up to me and asks me if I want to open this piece of paper he has folded up. Now, I love kids, especially weird ones, so I’m obviously gonna open it. And more importantly, I LOVE TALKING to kids. Like, actually listening to them and not just brushing them off like a lot of adults too. So it was a picture of this like, trippy looking Sonic the Hedgehog crossed with a Cornish Pixie from Harry Potter. There were red flames surrounded by it, too. I’m just looking at it and laughing quietly to myself. So then the conversation went like this:

Me: (chuckling) “Are you trying to scare me? What is this?”
Kid: “It’s a Sonic…”(honestly had no idea what he said after that. It sounded complex. He’s probably a mini genius or something. It was like A Sonic X5e or something.) “It’s a character from my book.”
Me: “Your book? Are you writing a book?”
Kid: “Yeah. Well actually, I’m writing three.”
Me: (genuinely impressed and perplexed) “Three?!”

Then he explains which each one is about, which again sounded so complex. And then he just walks away; like he’s glad he let me know what he’s doing at 11, and he should be. If this kid is the future, I think we may be okay. Hopefully there are others like him, brainstorming books and just being AWESOME.

What a good book can do

I recently borrowed The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath from my local library. I had put the book on reserve and they put aside two copies for me: this older book and new, crisp book that could not have been more than 2 years old. I’ve always been the type of person to want the clean, new book, but I decided to go with the old one. When I got home, I began to flip through the pages. There were notes every where. Highlights, asterisks and underlines from previous readers. I’ll never know who those readers are, but I knew every part of the book that touched each one of them deeply. On the back book jacket was a note.
“This book set me free. AMD 8/11/09”
I got the chills. It baffles my mind when people tell me they don’t like to read or that reading is a waste of time. How can that be? Think about “AMD,” the person who left the note. Maybe “AMD” would have been trapped forever had he or she decided not to read it. But they read this book…reading this book set this person free. That’s what any book can do. Books are so powerful. I’ll never stop reading.
I decided to leave a note for the next person who read that specific copy of The Bell Jar. Something small. “Me too ❤ ECD 8/13/13” It’s pretty bonkers that it was 4 years later that I finished the book. Maybe I will leave notes in any book I borrow from now on.

My dear friends, READ…please.