Wednesday, May 30, 2007

be yourself (broadley)


be yourself (broadley), originally uploaded by emdot.

Just talking to my co-worker Mike about this cool book project where a woman puts book spines together to make a story. And while we were talking I remembered something about myself that I hadn't thought of in a long long time.

When I was 9 or 10 I cataloged every book I owned AND I put a check out slip in each one, in case anyone wanted to borrow my books. Keep in mind that at this same time my favorite toy was my typewriter and that my step-father would often admonish me to "PUT THAT BOOK DOWN AND COME WATCH TV WITH THE REST OF US!"

nostalgia: me and becI think some things come to us as very young children. I can't remember not being able to read. I can't remember not wanting to be a writer. And I can't remember how many days I spent in libraries or organizing my books as a kid.

This post is brought to you by our word of the week, NERD. As in, that Emdot, damn she's a nerd.

5 comments:

kb said...

Oh my goodness, this is the cutest. We would have best friends when we were little too! I used to love to alphabatize my books in different ways; by book title, first name of the author, last name of the author, etc...I loved arranging and re-arranging the orders. I never had a card catalog system, but I used to teach classes to my stuff animals and make homework assignments for them. Fun memory!

.5 of babygrand said...

i LOVE this memory...it's so entwined in the continuity of emdotdotdot...like it makes me so crazy happy that you do the things you do in your life I'm about to burst happy.

I recently pieced together little bean's tendency to rearrange her room (one time w/ bamboo mats on every surface), draw new double-decker rooms + coerce uncles into commisioning Punky Production cards (there was even a brief case) to the bigger bean's occupations.

Happy nerds unite! It's a joy to do what you love.

emdot said...

Bean and KB -- both great comments. I really do think that there is something to what we are drawn to early in life.

KB -- that makes so much sense. :) Ha. I love thinking about it.

Bean -- and ditto. The fact that as a little bean you could even think that bamboo mats everywhere was possible... I just really love that.

Okay -- one more. I was the kid in elementary school (grades 1, 2, 3) who would line all the other kids up on a bench and then perform song and dance numbers for them. Little performer emdot! ;)

xoxo to you both!

REALJimBob said...

Wow, I did the book cataloguing thing too when I was little. No idea why, I went to the kind of school that pretty much meant I was the only one there that read, so none of my friends ever borrowed from my library... I even made up my own version of the Dewey Decimal system (not actually understanding how the real one worked) for it.

Actually I just looked up at the bookcase, and I guess I still do -- top two shelves fiction (sorted alphabetically by author), then non-fiction (sorted by subject), then computer books (sorted by publisher) and finally reference (sorted by subject again). I think we need a "nerd off"!!

Mermaid said...

It must be in the genes, cuz me and my sisters used to do the exact same thing. In fact, I still have a couple of those books and they still have the little slip of paper we taped in there with the Due Date listed on it. Too funny!