A For Beginners Story

I have a bookshelf in my house, on which I keep a tidy row of my relatively small collection of For Beginners books. It's right next to my slightly larger collection of Batman comic arcs and Star Wars bobble heads. Despite the fact that this small number of books is buried somewhere in the middle of my medium-sized bookshelf, filled with the surprisingly large number of books I have amassed over the course of my literary scholarship (I've still got two years to go, I think I'll need a bigger book shelf), every time I entertain guests, some one always manages to locate that small pocket of For Beginners goodness and says to me, "You read For Beginners too?"

I always get such gratification telling these people, "I don't just read the books, I work for For Beginners!" For a brief moment, I am above these people, all far more intelligent than me, who have read Foucault in their upper-level psych classes, Plato and Kierkegaard in advanced philosophy courses, and Chomsky and Ayn Rand just for the fun of it. But just last night, something unprecedented happened. Someone actually stole one of my For Beginners books!

Waking up this morning, I realized that my For Beginners were not as tidy as I usually keep them. All of the books were leaning toward a gap in my collection, right where I would normally find my copy of Global Warming!

I was shocked! Appalled! But, ultimately, honored. I am able to work for a company that puts out books people love so much, they would actually steal one from another person's home.

Do you have any For Beginners stories? I'd love to hear them. Leave me a comment.