Friday, January 10, 2003

Sometimes you get more information

Sometimes you get more information than you asked for.  Like, suppose you’re asking, “Which of these 4,000 books on MS-Access is right for me?  For my hopes, dreams, and personal limitations?  What makes them different from each other, and do any of those differences actually make one of them better?  Or best?" These are normal, healthy questions that people like you and me ask all the time.  There’s no reason to be ashamed or embarassed about them.  We are in good company.

But then - but then - as you idly pluck thick floppy masses of text off the shelves at Stacy’s and flip through them to see whose typeface, level of detail and sense of humor best match your own decorum and capacities - that’s when you get the extra information.  Someone has torn a page from a magazine and inserted it, folded in half, into the ostensibly unsullied volume in your hands.  On one side, a fashion plate featuring high-cost, high-exposure poolside fashion displayed on the body of a skinny little model.  On the obverse, you find the first page of an article on pubic hair: Who trims, dyes, shaves; pet names for one’s pubes; cultural insights into saving the shavings, genital perfumes and how to get incense smoke where it doesn’t belong. 

The page is torn - no way to tell what publication produced this tract.  But you read what you’ve found, grateful for the variety, earnestly convincing yourself, “this is still useful and important data for me to learn.  The kind of data I wouldn’t want to ask about at the busy information desk of this busy urban bookstore."

I, for one, would have been embarassed to ask, “Are there modern cultures that celebrate pubic surplussage, and the natural odors associated therewith?” But this time, I didn’t have to ask.  The answers just fell into my hands.  I think it’s God’s way of telling me to stop and smell the roses.