July 21, 2012
Caution: I Brake For Bookstores
It was a yearly ritual. At some point during the year—for the past few, on or around Ducky's birthday—we would do a mass reading of "The Phantom Tollbooth" at the store. One, it's one of my all-time favorite books, and owning your own store means doing what you want (within the law of the land and commonsense business practices). I like "The Phantom Tollbooth," therefore we read it over a random four-day weekend of my choosing. Since parents frequently have holiday plans over the normal four-day weekends, I choose anonymous days (well, anonymous to anyone outside our immediate family).
The second reason is because I own the world. Well, the map, anyway. About a month after I took over Papyrus, I stumbled over a yard sale with the find of the century: a ten-by-ten hunk of carpet with the map from the book dyed into the fibers. Not painted—dyed, all the way to the base. Someone had planned for the kids to walk on it for decades—and, here it was, in a yard sale. While my heart was breaking for the person who had put so much time and effort into such a beautiful piece of work, the greedy, selfish part was shoving a twenty in the seller's hand and running for the car.
Every year we would put out the carpet for the back-to-back reading (and every week we'd haul it out for Story time). I had lost track of how many offers I had had to buy it; nobody stood a chance.
Lexi had heard the story a hundred times since she was born. On the marathons, we read it back-to-back, nonstop, open to close, trading off readers every hour or so. Ducky always joins in, and we frequently get some of the NCIS crew to join in—even Tony DiNozzo, who is not the most comfortable around kids (but is a very expressive reader). Lexi can probably recite it in her sleep, but she was looking forward to our marathon in September as much as her daddy and I were.
Saturday morning, July 21, 2012. Just another Saturday morning. Ducky had pulled weekend duty and I had scored a huge hit at an estate sale the week before and had tons of books to sort, grade and price; rather than call in a weekend duty nurse for Mother, I just packed her in the front seat, put Lexi in her booster and schlepped us all to the store bright and early. Lexi made a beeline for the kids' section (like her mother, she's a bit of a slob in other areas but loves to organize books); Mother made a beeline for Geoff (who made a big fuss over not seeing her for the past few months); I made a beeline for the storeroom, with the boxes and boxes of books waiting for me.
We bounce radio stations a lot at the store, depending on the mood of who's listening. Classic rock, political talk shows (not so much, lately; even the ones I agree with are starting to grate), classical—just about anything but rap and hip-hip. I'm too old for that stuff. Lots of swing (Ducky will dance with me), lots of folk music, and lots of NPR.
I had been in mourning for the past month; one of my favorite shows, "Car Talk," was going off the air at the end of summer. Supposedly they were getting too old at 70 (or so one of the brothers accused the other). Piffle. Ducky is still the Chief Medical Examiner at NCIS at 70—come on, Tom and Ray, pull up your big boy boxers and keep broadcasting! Harumph.
I listened with half an ear while I sorted books as one show faded into the next. News at the top of the hour; occasional reminders to support public radio with a donation or donating a used car. "Car Talk" (learning bits and pieces of mechanical know-how around my guffaws) aired at ten then another favorite, a silly (though often even more educational) game show, "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" followed at eleven. ("Prairie Home Companion" would hit at six—just in time for whatever dinner I could con Ducky into picking up and bringing to the store.)
"—a game where we reward someone for being special by asking them about something ordinary. Fifty years ago, a young architect decided to procrastinate by writing a children's book. He had his roommate, a young cartoonist named Jules Feiffer, do the pictures."
My head whipped around. What? I quickly racked my brain, thinking of things Feiffer had illustrated. Jeez; the list was pretty long. Fifty years ago? No, it couldn't—
"'The Phantom Tollbooth' has been hailed as a classic—"
My shriek was louder than the applause. The crash of my rolling chair colliding with the freestanding metal rack and sending all the office supplies flying was even louder. At least four of my employees came plowing into the room, clamoring.
"Quiet, quiet!" I yelped. "I can't hear the show!"
Rolling their eyes and shaking their heads, they abandoned me.
"Well, it's a book about a little boy, about ten years old, who hates school, doesn't really understand why he has to learn anything and doesn't believe anything adults tell him and doesn't understand anything about them and they don't understand anything about him… He comes home from school one day, finds someone has left a big package, which is a toll booth, assembles it, goes through the toll booth and ends up in a kind of crazy land where all rhyme and reason has been banished. And he has a series of adventures with a lot of word play, a lot of crazy things happening and a lot of fun."
I ignored the disaster around me and hung on every word.
"What was the reaction to the book when it came out?"
"It was kind of unanimous, it was not a children's book. The vocabulary was too difficult for kids. The situations and the things I talked about were way out of their understanding. The word play and the punning, they would never get. And to top it off, they told me that fantasy was bad for children because it disoriented them."
From the front of the store I heard a chorus of, "Oh, puh-leeze." They were clearly listening to the same station.
Peter Sagal, the host, piped up, "Speaking as a child who liked fantasy that was the point." That got applause from the staff (and the audience).
We listened for the next ten minutes or so, laughing at comments about the book, applauding here and there, hearing, "Are you nuts?" from Geoff when Mr. Juster chose wrong answers on the quiz—and had to be nudged to the right answers.
"It never occurred to me, for all those years I was reading and enjoying your book that some day I would end up desperately helping you cheat." (I just love Peter Sagal. Now I know why. We're linked through a children's book.)
It wasn't until the ending music for the "Not My Job" segment of the show cued up that the pain struggled to the surface and I realized I had sprained my ankle but good. Oh, man. Ducky is not going to let me live this down.
Later, when he brought in Chinese take out and re-taped my ankle, he confirmed my fears. "I will never let your forget this one."
"You're just sore because you missed the show."
He patted my head. "WAMU has podcasts, my dear."
Why didn't I think of that earlier?
A/N I won't say that I almost had a car accident while driving and listening to today's re-broadcast of "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me." But I did let out a screech that could be heard across traffic. I know this because the kids in the car two lanes over heard me over their (alleged) music and turned to stare. I sat in the parking lot at my friend's apartment complex untiil the show was over and all I could think was, "OMG, Sandy would flip out."
The quotes are straight from the NPR transcript. If you missed the show, I heartily recommend catching a podcast.
Oh, man, I can't wait to get my grubby paws on the annotated version! I'll even pay retail!