Bookmark

From the time my son was little until the horrible trauma of my parents both getting sick and then passing away in 2001, I read an average of two books a week, pretty much every week. I read detective stories, chick lit, best-sellers, some classics, a little bit of everything really, except fantasy. After my folks died, I wrote more than I read and I kind of lost my luster for reading what other people were writing, even though I was always reading something...I was averaging more like one book every month to two.

Then last fall my son was talking about this series that he's been reading for years called The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind, and I felt like maybe I needed to tackle this whole lack of reading issue from a completely different starting point. It's been a strange and interesting trip; this fantasy world of giant beasts and magic and wizards and warriors.

I'm on book four now; Temple of the Winds. True to form it's 500 pages of intrigue, blood and guts, plagues and monsters; and stuck in the middle? A receipt from a Speedway gas station in Youngstown dated 9/15/06, for two jumbo hot dogs and $26 bucks worth of gas, sold to guy named Glen by a girl named Angie. I've been using it as a bookmark.

And what do I know about Glen and Angie? Surprisingly, quite a bit.

Glen is apparently a regular Speedway customer with a rewards card, because there is a separate receipt detailing his balance of 15,973 points. He's probably earned his free dinner for two ($40.00 value) at Applebee's by now. I'm just saying.

And what do I know about Angie? Well I know she was obviously interested in Glen because she wrote her cell number down on the receipt. Which he apparently left in Temple of the Winds when he returned it to the Hooterville library.

I'm tempted to call Angie and find out what happened. Does she still work at Speedway? Did Glen ever call her? Does she even remember writing her number on his receipt? Are they in the process of living happily ever after together?

Every time I mark my place with that receipt I wonder if the fact that Glen left it in the book when he returned it means that he didn't care enough to even remember that he had her number. (Bastard!) Or had he already programmed it into his phone by then?

Now that's the stuff of fantasy.