Last Saturday night…

At the urging of friends, I recently hosted at my house a screening of the film Hobo with a Shotgun, an homage to exploitation films of decades ago. It goes without saying that there may have been a tiny bit of alcohol involved at said get-together, and after the film was over and the lot of us mulled about afterwords, one friend, who was in town for the weekend from several states away, saw my copies of Myst: The Book of Atrus on the bookshelf and told me how much he’d enjoyed it ages ago, although he’d never finished the trilogy. Turns out we’d both been in grade school at the time and ordered the book from the same Scholastic book catalog that was often circulated to students.

In my slightly inebriated state, I excitedly lent him my three-in-one volume of Myst and the first book of Chung Kuo in hardcover, insisting that, of course, he’d love it. BUT… it turns out, in my drunken stupor, I’d shoved an old copy of The Middle Kingdom in his face, it completely slipping my mind that I should’ve given him Son of Heaven! I actually didn’t have a copy on hand to give him, since my only non-Limited Edition (not giving that one out) is already on loan (Rosa, any day now, I’d like it back). But the immense shame I felt, the following morning, knowing I may have started him out on the old path. Aiya!

So the moral of the lesson is: don’t lend out books in a compromised state. You might lend out the wrong one.

Now let’s see if this book actually makes its way back to me. You know what they say… don’t lend books you expect to be returned…