slime - noun - glop made from glue, baking soda, and contact solution (picture Silly Putty or Play Dough on a grander scale) that is currently trending among elementary school children.
Early on Sunday, I decided to be brave and take an unprecedented risk. Finding myself in my attic, I hauled out several boxes of books–titles (mainly for children) I had written and published years ago– carried them to my car and drove a few miles to become one of about fifty vendors at a local street fair, a.k.a. swap meet or flea market. The cost was $140 to camp out for seven hours on a segment of the pavement measuring twelve by six feet on Union Avenue in downtown Cranford, New Jersey. Quaint, compact Cranford has been used as a location for a few films and cable TV series, notably HBO's The Plot Against America based on Phillip Roth's timely, 2004 novel of the same name set during World War II. The innocuous, suburban hamlet fits the bill as the setting since it is complete with a stone railroad station built in the mid-1930s and Victorian hotel at its center, but I digress. As I was going to sell my paperbacks for $5 and $6, I didn't think I would break even no less garner a profit; but because my main man in L.A. told me he would make up the difference in long-stemmed roses, I figured I had nothing to lose.
The organizers of the event placed me, my card table, chair, simple signage and boxes of books in front of the food trucks and between a primitive fine artist sans a right eye and a entrepreneur of slime, i.e. a mother of a teenage daughter who at the age of nine was into making and marketing her own–slime, that is. As the girl grew into adolescence, the manufacture and distribution of slime grew banal, so her mother usurped her business, invested more time and money in the making and packaging of the glop, and became a regular at street fairs throughout the state, jumping on the bandwagon of a trend that is on the ridiculous side. (But aren't all childhood attractions?) I figured that the monocular artist wasn't competition, but the purveyor of slime? I had no idea how popular homemade putty could be. Scores of children dragging their parents lined up under the vendor's tent to press their fingers into soft, colorful samples of pure slime and to whine and plead for anywhere from eight to twenty dollars to buy what they can probably create at home for much less. Very few parents even noticed that I was selling books, selling literacy, for so much less. I have to admit that I was glad the kids were pumped up to experience something digital (tactile) as opposed to digital (technological), but I was disappointed that the parents were so quick to dismiss the idea of buying their kids signed books that took many years to write, illustrate, and publish. At the end of the day, ironically, the bearer of slime made hundreds while I walked away with $53. (My boyfriend owes me $87 worth of red roses :). And I will hold him to an arrangement stipulated in the arrangement.)
As I wheeled my collapsible red wagon filled with unwanted, once well-received/reviewed books up Union Avenue toward my car lodged in a parking garage blocks away, I couldn't help but think that there might be something a bit off kilter with parents who don't value the idea of literacy. In today's world, it seems that there are more writers than readers as it has become so easy to self-publish a book on-line as an e-book. If parents don't promote reading then who will read the massive amount of techno tomes? Teachers already have too much on their plates. And besides, there is a national deficient of individuals willing to toe the line and go into teaching as a career. If parents are forced to homeschool as a result, will there be a sufficient amount of emphasis on the core subjects like reading, or will the science of slime and the like be at the center of it all? Okay, maybe I'm being a bit cynical here, but when it comes to education, I'm kinda of worried about the future. How about you?
#word-to-words, #slice-of-life, #literature, #blog, #blogging, #books, #editorial, #reading, #vocabulary, #history, #ReadersMagnet, #spilled thoughts, #good advice, #personal-essay, #writing community, #writing
No comments:
Post a Comment