This month it is A Tale of Two Cities. Richard claims to own a copy, but it is in a box somewhere, so I looked for it online. I probably could have found it in one of the local used books stores (That's right. We have those. I mean where do you think this is? Payson?) but that would require getting in my car and driving down town and that is not really my style. I found it on Amazon for 75 cents plus shipping. So we held a family counsel and decided that it was a wise investment and I bought it.
A week later, it came. I was surprised at how small the envelope was -- just your run-of-the-mill padded envelope -- since I always understood that "A Tale of Two Cities" was a rather long book. So I open the envelope and what do I see?
THIS
Gah!! Classics Illustrated!! What am I supposed to do with this? Look at the pictures? Like some kind of ANIMAL!?! Blast these careless sellers who list their stuff wrong. How they inconvenience and annoy me! Can't they pay a little attention so that I do not have to deal with their incompetence?
Well I tell you what, I marched right upstairs and sat down at my computer to send a message to that mistake maker and tell them what’s what. And when I opened my Amazon account to look at the transaction, I saw that that silly graphic novel was the book I had ordered. There was a picture and everything. Darn.
So, turns out the mistake maker was me. I always think about how, in many interactions everyday, one or both parties will come out of it thinking that the other person is an idiot. And I have decided that is is very good for me to be reminded that, AT LEAST half of the time, the idiot is me.
So, what did I do in this instance? I said "Forget It!" and I'm reading Great Expectations instead.
