Monday, October 29, 2007

Encylcopedia envy

In One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty, she writes about reading the encyclopedia - which brought on a nostalgic flashback.

The only encyclopedias I had as a child were the Golden Book Encyclopedias - those glossy, colorful, brief encyclopedias that my mother got at the grocery store.

Every few weeks, a new volume would be available for a bargain price if her total bill was over a certain amount.

It seemed to take forever to get the whole set, but I remember how exciting it was when a new volume came home.

"Oh, yay - the P, Q and R volume is here!"

But then my best friend's parents bought The World Book Encyclopedia - the mother of all encyclopedias, in my eyes.

I mean, it had those totally awesome tissue paper pictures of the human body, where you could peel back the layers and see the organs and stuff.

Sigh....

Envy....

(Note: This was the same best friend who used to gallop around my yard on a broomstick with me, playing "horse" for hours on end. And then she up and got a REAL horse. E-N-V-Y to the nth degree.)

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