Bedtime Story

We are spending the Thanksgiving holiday with Jennifer's parents. When packing to come here, we recognized that Jennifer's mother is the sort who has everything we might need, or a reasonable substitute, and therefore certain items could be left at home. In particular, we only packed one book for the boys -- Field Pea's favorite and one I knew he would get a kick out of having other people read to him.

The house has plenty of reading material, including material suitable for young children. The bedding arrangements put Jellybean in one room and Field Pea in the larger room into which Jellybean's only door enters. The books are on shelves in this larger room. Field Pea goes to bed when I start reading stories to Jellybean, which means Jellybean's are pretty much limited to what we take off the shelves before Field Pea goes down.

Two nights in a row now, Jellybean has selected a story about a family camping trip. Two nights in a row now, after that story, he has wanted to read more and picked up an old collection of Reader's Digest jokes and anecdotes that is kept in the room he sleeps in. (The first night, he picked a book of poetry instead.)

What do you know Reader's Digest for? I think it used to be known for making literary works more accessible (and shorter) for the masses. That was the time period this collection came from. Nevermind that the magazine has since strayed into. . . well, maybe also out of. . . Ah, we'll get to that.

The first night, opening the book to a random chapter, I chances upon a short story about a man and his cat in an apartment in some city. Really, a story about social interactions the man had as a result of his cat's wanderings. It was amusing; apparently Jellybean thought so, too.

The second night, I looked at the table of contents to once again pick out a short story instead of a themed string of jokes from one of the magazine's humor columns. I chose a story about a man who frequently didn't quite pay attention to what people were saying, with the result that he misunderstood them to comic results. The title example was mistaking "No man is an island" for "No mayonnaise in Ireland."

I was 2-1/4 pages into the 3-page story when I had to skip the end of a sentence, and then the next few paragraphs. Jellybean knows I stopped reading -- he complained about it. Hopefully he didn't pick up that where I started didn't quite follow where I had left off. What he heard went like this:

. . . I went over and told her how much I liked her dress.
"Thank you," she said, "I always say."
[pause]
On occasion, however, I'm still baffled. Like the time last summer when. . .

To save you the worry, I'll tell you what the woman said, not what the man heard. The rest will be pretty explanatory.

. . . I went over and told her how much I liked her dress.
"Thank you," she said, "I always say, you can't beat Saks."
Well, I don't have to have the roof fall on me. I sat down on the couch and put my arm around her. . .

I haven't noticed it so much lately -- of course, I've pretty much stopped even thumbing through the things for the jokes lately -- but for a while there I thought the magazine was interested in only 1) promoting conservative Christian values and 2) telling its readers to have good sex. I thought the latter was the new trend, not the former. Guess I was wrong.

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