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Thursday, May 24, 2007

Booking Through Thursday

The question for this week didn't really apply to me since I only have one foreign language book and I couldn't read it when I got it (it was for a college course in French), so there's no way I can read it now. Instead I chose to answer an earlier question I missed:

RIP

Reading. In. Public.

Do you do it? Why or why not?

Yes, I do read in public. All the time. I read at the doctor's office. I read in restaurants if I am alone. I read while waiting for a bus. I read on the bus. I read while sitting on my front porch. I read anywhere I can take a book and catch a few pages or chapters while I'm waiting for something else. I'm impatient. I don't like waiting. Reading while I'm waiting makes me far less snarly than I'd be if I had to wait that 20 minutes it takes my doctor to finally get to me. It also keeps me from sending bills to professional people (for the time of mine they've wasted) who have kept me waiting far too long as though their time is more important than mine.

Because I read in public, I have noticed that people can be incredibly rude. If I have a book open on my lap, and if I'm looking at the pages of my book, even though my lips are not moving, I am reading said book. This is a no-brainer which any child over the age of 3 could comprehend. Yet it never fails when I am reading away from home, some clod will always interrupt my reading because that person thinks I should be listening to his or her troubles instead of minding my own business and focusing on my book.

Once, while I was at a doctor's office waiting my turn, reading My Life by Bill Clinton which admittedly is a dreadful book not worthy of anyone's time (I thought about billing him for the hours it took me to plow through such agonizing drivel), two women came into the office together. They sat across the room from me and began talking to each other. That's not a problem for me. I can drown out any outside noise while I'm reading. But after a while they were not content to chat amongst themselves. No, they wanted to include me in their conversation. Well, actually that was the impression they tried to give. Frankly I doubt either one of them cared a fat rat's ass why I was in the same office as they were. They just wanted a new ear into which they might dump their data. I tried to make it clear I was not into that whole data dumping receptacle stuff, but that didn't matter. They continued chattering away at me anyway.

Eventually I put down my book because I had read the same sentence about 10 times and still didn't know what it said. This could have been a comment on the quality of Bill Clinton's writing, but in fact, it was because those two women had finally managed to distract me from my book.

From there thing went seriously downhill. We had just got to the point where one of the women was offering to take off her shirt so she could show me her surgical scars when fortunately I was saved by the receptionist calling my name. That's when I knew for posilutely absotively certain that there is a God, and She even trots along to the Doctor's office with us.

This is not the only time this has happened to me, and I simply do not understand how people can think that if I'm reading I'd much rather be listening to them blathering on and on about themselves. I'd never presume to be so rude. Well... except if I can't see what someone else is reading. I may interrupt just long enough to ask because I HAVE to know. But that's not so bad right? Especially since I shut up as soon as I have my answer. I mean, it's not like I blather or anything.

So, back to the question. YES!!! I do read in public, and I'm going to keep on doing it no matter how many scars I end up missing.

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