Day 186

The 11-year old, much to his dismay, has a reading assignment over the summer. All of the children going into the 6th grade must read The Wizard of Oz before school starts. He tried to convince me it was "optional", but unfortunately his mother knows how to get on the school web site and look for herself...

So off we went to the bookstore, in search of a yellow brick road and The Great Wizard. And despite the moans and groans on the way there, as soon as we walked through the doors he said, "I like this store".

It's true. He's always loved the library and book stores, even when he was a toddler. We would literally go every day to one or the other- mostly because it was free entertainment, but also because he just seemed to like it. We would read books and do puzzles, play word games on the computers, and come home with a new treasure to read before bedtime.

These days, he's graduated from Goodnight Moon to the teen section, looking for series named "Warrior" or "Survivor". But we both also enjoy browsing the large sections at the front of the store that hold displays of all sorts of books grouped together by categories. Many of them are the kind of books you find on coffee tables- conversation starters and time-passers.

There are all sorts of books grouped together on cars, architecture and travel, planes, food, history, etc. I have always thought that whoever is in charge of these displays does an excellent job, because hardly a person goes by that doesn't stop and flip through at least one book in this section before making their way to the cash register.

My son tends to meander towards the history section- like father like son. I perused through a "Wonders of the World" book that talked about The Empire State Building (did you know they used to have those windows all cleaned by hand??) and The Imperial Palace, then wandered over to see what he had found. A book which depicted the different uniforms of soldiers throughout history was open, and he had moved on to a book which described the different Special Forces.

Looking casually down at the table in front of me, I noticed the two books in my picture stacked next to each other. I paused, then giggled and looked around to see if anyone noticed. I mean, was this a joke? A stack of books by the Dalai Lama was placed next to another stack- the Small Arms Visual Encyclopedia.....even the look on the Dalai Lama's face seemed to be looking at me and saying, " I know right? This is fresh, isn't it?" I mean, the glasses he had on kind of looked like the yellow ones people wear when they are shooting guns at the range but....yeah I doubt that was his intention.

I pulled out my phone and snapped a pic. And yes, I picked up the Dalai Lama book and flipped through it. So maybe it wasn't a mistake to put it there- I probably never would have given it a second look if it hadn't been placed where it was.

Today's pic represents how opposites attract, and how what can seem like a mistake at first  may actually turn out to be a positive outcome. Because I bought the Dalai Lama book. I'll let you know What Matters Most...