Weird, the things that I remember
I was in the town library, walking through the science fiction section and I noticed a familiar book. I wasn't really reading the titles, but this particular book jumped out at me just from the general look of the cover. It was a Star Trek book. Specifically it was Shadows on the Sun by Micheal Jan Friedman. A copy of this book had sat on my bookshelf for several years before it finally got boxed up and donated somewhere during one of my moves. I never read it, but managed to have a complicated relationship with it anyway. There's nothing particularly special about the book in a general sense, except that it was released in hardcover which writings of this, um, caliber usually are not, and that my copy was given to me under rather odd circumstances. Star Trek novels came and went from my shelf, mostly loaned to me by a colleague of my father, but this one stayed on for years after the rest had been returned or given away. I even remember the exact place on the shelf where it was because I remember staring at it as I was trying to fall asleep. I glared at it. Its presence had come to symbolize much of what was wrong with my social life, and it always seemed to be daring me to read it.
It was given to me as a birthday gift by someone who had, at one time, been my best friend but who was already drifting further and further from me at the time that she gave me the gift. I hadn't seen her since the end of school and we met up in a pub with our parents in Oxfordshire. The book, however, is an American printing, and she schlepped it all the way to England to be able to give it to me on that one day that we sat together not really having that much to say. We must have been around twelve. The girl who gave it to me was never really a geek, she's not the kind of person who ever would have read the book and I suspect now as I did then that her brother had a hand in choosing it. Part of the reason I never read it is that I became somehow convinced that the gift had been in someway back-handed. That she was trying to point out and reinforce what a loser I was, that I was such a geek and that we had nothing in common. On some level I knew that it was surely a kind gesture, one of acceptance towards my bizarre tastes from someone who knew nothing about science fiction and so didn't know what a good sci-fi book was, and just tried to pick something I would like. Thinking about the book now from a more adult perspective I realize other ways in which it was a sweet gift. First, the person who gave it to me was very conscious of her image, but braved actually going to the counter and purchasing a Star Trek novel for me. Second, it has Dr. McCoy as the central character. He's my favorite TOS character and there are very few books that focus on him. She bought one of them. Overall, it shows an almost creepy degree of knowledge of me from someone who I thought no longer even wanted to know who I was (atleast in public). Basically, the degree of worry I had put into this book is a great example of the paranoia of my young self. I made such an angst-ridden slap out of a really sweet, if silly, gift.
Suddenly I was overcome with a strange curiosity/guilt that I never read the book that one of my oldest friends had chosen - perhaps with help, perhaps just with a lucky guess, perhaps with reluctance - but chosen and lugged to England for me. I picked up the library's copy and checked it out. I'm reading it. It's actually quite entertaining.
It was given to me as a birthday gift by someone who had, at one time, been my best friend but who was already drifting further and further from me at the time that she gave me the gift. I hadn't seen her since the end of school and we met up in a pub with our parents in Oxfordshire. The book, however, is an American printing, and she schlepped it all the way to England to be able to give it to me on that one day that we sat together not really having that much to say. We must have been around twelve. The girl who gave it to me was never really a geek, she's not the kind of person who ever would have read the book and I suspect now as I did then that her brother had a hand in choosing it. Part of the reason I never read it is that I became somehow convinced that the gift had been in someway back-handed. That she was trying to point out and reinforce what a loser I was, that I was such a geek and that we had nothing in common. On some level I knew that it was surely a kind gesture, one of acceptance towards my bizarre tastes from someone who knew nothing about science fiction and so didn't know what a good sci-fi book was, and just tried to pick something I would like. Thinking about the book now from a more adult perspective I realize other ways in which it was a sweet gift. First, the person who gave it to me was very conscious of her image, but braved actually going to the counter and purchasing a Star Trek novel for me. Second, it has Dr. McCoy as the central character. He's my favorite TOS character and there are very few books that focus on him. She bought one of them. Overall, it shows an almost creepy degree of knowledge of me from someone who I thought no longer even wanted to know who I was (atleast in public). Basically, the degree of worry I had put into this book is a great example of the paranoia of my young self. I made such an angst-ridden slap out of a really sweet, if silly, gift.
Suddenly I was overcome with a strange curiosity/guilt that I never read the book that one of my oldest friends had chosen - perhaps with help, perhaps just with a lucky guess, perhaps with reluctance - but chosen and lugged to England for me. I picked up the library's copy and checked it out. I'm reading it. It's actually quite entertaining.