Thursday, March 6, 2008

Pigs and Books and Letters

I treated myself to a splurge today, the first of its kind in a long time: a hamburger ... and fries. As I was walking to the car afterwards (in the drizzle and plummeting temperatures), I found myself wondering if I were to write a list of my favorite things, what it might contain.

I should compose that list, I thought. Maybe it would say something lasting about me, something more meaningful anyway than the rants or musings that often occupy these pages. It wasn't a morbid thought, mind you, just the kind of thing that you sometimes think when you write words down regularly.

What might that list contain?

When I was in fifth grade, the year from which I begin the reckoning of my adulthood oddly enough, we went to a farm. I remember nothing of that trip except for the pig pen. The piglets were small, pink and squealed incessantly, and they let us hold them. As they passed me my shrieking bundle of joy, it immediately went silent, closed its eyes and went to sleep. Shelly looked up. He'll make a good daddy, she said.

That's what my list would contain at the top: a boy sitting in his father's lap, the two of them reading a book, the boy absolutely focused on the pages, on the words of the story and on the turning of each page. The list would include other things, of course, but that would be one of two items at the top.

This morning, I ran into a YouTube video of a boy and a man. It brought me to tears. It's exactly what I had in mind.


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