I have been feeling a bit under the weather these last days but last night could have been the turning point. In a conversation earlier yesterday morning, an out of area friend was kind to check on me and said that if he were closer he would drop off ice cream. My, the power of suggestion was strong. Over the course of the next six hours, this tiny strain of an idea would be become the full-fledged rope I was convinced I needed in order to be well. If only I had ice cream...
Luckily, I live in a great neighborhood, and I was convinced that someone nearby would have ice cream. Enter SMS: "Do you have ice cream?" In retrospect, this was probably a vague question to send out to a neighbor, but I was desperate. Finally, I received the magic answer: "No, but I will get you some." [Okay, the magic answer was really a series of texts where I explained I had been really sick and thought ice cream would help. This is a culinary neighborhood and I could have needed ice cream for bananas foster. My neighbors are great but no one is going to trek out in the rain for ice cream for your dessert if they had not been invited to dinner.]
If you are still reading, you might be wondering what this has to do with books. I am getting to that.
In about twenty minutes, the doorbell rang and I had ice cream. Since I was cashless, I moved to the barter system and traded ice cream for Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. I had read it at some point while traveling this year and knew that my neighbor would probably enjoy it.
I received a text this morning as a review on the book: "it rocks."
Never underestimate the power of books and good neighbors.
No comments:
Post a Comment