Jonathan Field - Maker of Random Stuff

Monthly Archives: December 2009

Guns, Germs, and Romance

Flying in to Boston I watched the in-flight movie 500 Days of Summer. Really enjoyed it. It’s a story that touches on notions of coincidence and fate in love. Highly recommended it if you like quirky, bittersweet romance.

After the movie I was reading my book club book — Guns, Germs, and Steel. It’s about the development of societies around the globe over the past 10,000 years or so, the resulting clashes, and possible reasons for the course that human history ultimately took. It’s dense stuff, but I am enjoying it so far. I am the one who suggested this book for the book club. My fellow book club members Lisa and Christa are, as of yet, skeptical that they’ll find anything in it to enjoy.

Anyway, at some point I got up to stretch my legs and noticed that a girl in the row in front of me had the same book on her tray table. I was a bit surprised — even though it’s a pulitzer prize winning book, I’d say it falls far short of being terribly common.

In the movie 500 Days of Summer we’d all just watched, there’s a part where a chance question by a passer-by about a book one of the characters is reading leads to them falling in love and getting married. And with that setup, here we were. I tried to nonchalantly get a look at the reader.

She was a slender medium-blonde haired girl, probably just a few years younger than me. She had her hair pulled back simply, revealing a cute, attractive face, adorned with thin black rimmed librarian glasses. She wore no makeup and didn’t need to. She was the quintessential secretly hot bookworm girl. She was talking quietly with a girlfriend.

I considered this for a moment as I sat back down and continued my read. The flight was almost done and I figured there might be a chance to say “hi” as we disembarked.

On the ground as we all got up her friend spotted my book, which I made sure to keep visible as I got my stuff together. She whispered to her pretty librarian friend, “Look! That guy is reading the same book!” And then with a quiet laugh, “It’s fate!”. I could only just barely hear their conversation, which was not intended for me, so I didn’t look over. The pretty librarian girl simply replied “Yeah, right.”

A moment later the friend asked me to get her jacket down, which I did in as friendly and manly a way as I could muster, hoping that she’d mention something about the book I was still prominently holding. At this point the pretty librarian girl had long since put her own book away. Then there was a bit of a hold up as an older lady had some trouble getting her bag down, and I offered to help her. After things started moving again the pretty librarian girl said “thank you” to me, presumably for helping the older lady. Then she headed down the aisle and out herself. I walked out behind her.

I thought that maybe I’d say something to her as she waited by baggage claim, but after walking behind her for a couple minutes on the way there, I decided not to. She never glanced back. I lost track of her a few moments later.

Oh well — she was probably just reading it reluctantly at the suggestion of some annoying book club guy anyway.

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