What Are The Odds?

Since it’s that time of year again/already, I thought I would tell a little tale about my oldest daughter and the Christmas gift.

One year while roaming around the shops searching for something she would like, I wandered into a bookstore. Although I knew she loved to read, I had never bought her a book since she was an adult, but I thought I would have a go at it and maybe come up with one she would like. I love books, too. I can spend a heck of a lot of time browsing around in a bookstore. And I can usually tell after reading the first few paragraphs or pages if it would be something I would like. Not always, (I have ended up with a few clunkers) but most of the time it does work. In fact I try to do that with these posts. Try to grab your attention at the beginning so you keep reading instead of sighing with boredom while moving on to someone else. Maybe I should go back to the top and start over with “It was a dark and stormy night…” but no, it’s too late now, you’re either going to keep reading or you’re not.

So there I was checking out all the books, seeing a lot that I would like but not quite sure if she would. After looking around for a while trying to find something really different and interesting, I ended up in the back of the store where the books were just in a pile on a table. No best sellers here. No authors that I had ever heard of. Books just scattered here and there. Books that nobody else was probably interested in, and there it was. A book about Dragons. It immediately caught my interest (“Flydragon”? ). I thumbed through and loved it. All about dragons, no photos (don’t know why) but lots of great colorful drawings, lots of fairy tale and dashing knights info, so much fun, what’s not to like?

After debating with myself for awhile, “would she, wouldn’t she” I decided to buy it pretty sure that she would like it but on the off chance that she didn’t, I would tell her she could give it back and I would get her something else. I mean I knew she wouldn’t sit there and say “I hate this book”, but would instead just smile and say thanks whether she meant it or not, and she could always give it back with some excuse like “Oh I love it but I don’t have any room left on the bookshelf”, or “Oh I already have this one”. ( Well, she wouldn’t try that one because she would know there would be no way I would ever believe that cockamamie excuse, although she did come up with some weird excuses when she was a kid that she thought I would fall for.)

So, it’s Christmas. After much eating and drinking (sodas) it was time to open the gifts. When she removed the wrapping from the book, she starting laughing. Really laughing. Okay, she liked it! That was a relief!! Then I opened the gift she had given me and I found out the real reason she was laughing. Yep, believe it or not, she had given me the exact… same…. book. Now the odds on that happening with a book about dragons by an author that neither one of us had ever heard of have to be astronomical to say the least. To this day, I don’t know if she liked it or not, but at least it still causes laughter.

I course I can’t end this post without a little picture of her for all the world to see…. maybe not the whole world but at least the 12 or so people that read this post….. well at least the 6 people (family) that made it all the way through to the end.

This was taken when she was about 2 1/2 years old, and although she has her little party skirt and hat on, she does not look too happy. Maybe because she found out we were just telling her a little story and there really wasn’t any party? And although she tells me that she reads and likes this blog, she has never once left a comment. If this post doesn’t bring forth a comment from her, then maybe she is just telling me a little story………….