The Reading

On the final day of this month, I am travelling to Ball State University to have dinner with my daughter. She will buy our dinner on a dormitory food card that I paid for at twenty-times the going rate for day old lasagna. So, by golly, I'm loading up! So long Lenten diet!

Afterwards, I am walking across the parking lot to Emens Auditorium to hear David Sedaris read excerpts from his books. Following the reading, I hope he will sign some of my first editions of his works, which I am bringing in tow.

Odd, perhaps, but the book reading is not a hot ticket to most people. I expect to find a bunch of gray-haired, balding, middle-aged losers and literary-wanna-bes like myself sitting alone in the darkness, mouthing petitions to an unseen book-god.

The last book reading I attended was one of my own. It was at a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Carmel. About fifteen people showed up (because I invited them) and the rest of the customers strode by during the reading, glancing at me as if I were giving someone a colonoscopy without anaesthesia. Nobody stopped. Nobody cared. My mother didn't attend, said she had something better to do. And one little kid even gave me the finger.

So ended my great book reading tour. I hope David Sedaris fares better.