Emergency Books

“Jonathan come here quick oh my gosh Jonathan hurry hurry hurry HURRY!”

Computers careen through the air; chairs helicopter lopsidedly; small tremors shiver through the apartment. I charge upon my invisible steed toward the sound of my damsel in distress one room over. I overshoot my target, since steeds are hard to stop once charging, then back-pedal to find my wife gesticulating wildly toward some dark corner.

“It was HUGE hurry get it before it runs away there it is!”

I swing my mighty battle axe at the fell beast and smite it upon the head repeatedly until it is cloven in two. (Despite being mighty, my battle axe is not very sharp).

“Is it dead let me see.”

Once again I have saved the day. I gather up my wilting battle axe and the beast within and flush them into the toilet’s twirling torrents, never mentioning to my wife that the bug was smaller than my pinky fingernail. Okay, so sometimes I do mention it, but I still kill the foul little creatures. And occasionally they are considerable enough to warrant both my respect and a larger weapon than a tissue.

Though I am generally the more emotional of us, my wife has a more sudden and cataclysmic response to perceived emergencies. Or perhaps my responses are just as intense, but my mind classifies fewer events in the category of emergency. For example, a few minutes into a trip, my wife will sometimes suddenly release the sort of severe gasp that I would reserve for situations akin to the moment when I realized Evelyn Waugh was a man. I respond:

“Where are they? Where?” The gasp indicated to me that a herd of antelope was charging at our car from somewhere outside my line of vision.

“Dang it, I forgot to bring my white sweater in the car with me!”

“Your sweater? It’s in your suitcase - are you telling me there are no antelope?”

At this she seems confused, and I emit my own sigh. But I have to give her credit for putting up with what I consider emergencies, particularly issues related to evolution, theology, or Swedish holidays (and their accompanying gastronomy – mmm St. Lucia buns).

Concerning one particular emergency, though, we are ardently united: the travesty of having to wait somewhere for more than five minutes without something to read. And I mean something worth reading, not those awful magazines that befoul countless waiting rooms across the nation. (The least they could do is cancel all their subscriptions to Horse and Hound and pool their funds to get a worthy news periodical like The Economist.)

I might even admit that one of those gasps without warning is justified when one has forgotten her emergency book, and my wife and I have both had this misfortune. My wife is really responsible for helping me establish the habit of the emergency book, and I can no longer imagine life without it. She has had this practice since she was a youth, when she would sometimes even bring books when her family went out for dinner. I never brought a book with me on common errands until I married my wife, but now it is one of the items on the list whenever I go anywhere. And her habit of reading during meals has influenced me as well. It is not uncommon for us to read through meals at home together, and this often greatly improves are conversations later. Rather than just making small talk about the day, we can discuss issues raised by whatever we are reading, whether it is the social consequences of the bubonic plague or the effects of censorship in China, the diction of Shakespeare or the merits of natural food. And I assure you all of these topics have actually arisen.

One of my favorite topics to discuss is Medieval Literature and History. It would not be strange for someone to find my wife and me discussing The Battle of Maldon, Volsunga Saga, and Lord of the Rings in conjunction some night at a coffee shop. This sort of conversation would undoubtedly be enriching for us. While my wife would have been equipped for such a discussion due to her degree, I never would have been able to participate were it not for a day trip when I stole Ashley’s copy of Beowulf as my emergency book. What literary passions I would lack without having encountered Beowulf I cringe to consider.

In a world where conversation often descends to the banality of voyeuristic reality TV shows, there is an easy solution for recapturing quality discussion. Rather than picking up that remote when you’re bored, pick up a book. And if you find yourself so busy that you don’t even have time to be bored, the emergency book is one of the easiest ways to squeeze in some extra time immersing yourself in new (or old) ideas.