Gently Used

On Wednesday I went to the university book sale, made possible by book donations from the community. The room was labeled thoughtfully by genre: History, Art, Travel, Cooking, and so on. Us patrons, however, were all of the same genre: Cheap. Paperbacks were $3 and hardcovers were $5.

The tension was thick as we competed to find the best of the worst. Scooting by others became a master class in passive aggression. The more time I spent there the more I started sweating, worrying I might miss something. I knew it was time to go when a woman next to me looked down at my box set of The New Yorker Encyclopedia of Cartoons and said, “nice find.”

(The set was $10 as it included two reference books, A-K and L-Z. My sense of civilivty precluded my urge to protest the obvious double charge.)

Sometimes community means scraping the bottom of the barrel together.