This weekend I got talking to a friend of a friend. He used to work for the Environmental Protection Agency and I wrote a children’s book with an environmental underpinning … so we chatted about the environment, marine debris, plastic recycling, alternatives to single-use throwaway plastics … all sorts of things that made everyone else in the room roll their eyes and shake their heads. Toward the end of his visit, this nice, nice man surprised me.
Him: “Would you be interested in having a few of my better environmental books?”
Me: “!” (I was speechless as I tried to figure out how to answer. Did he want me to buy them? Should I? Could I? Did he want to give them to me?!!!)
Him: “I am downsizing my personal library. I’ve got quite a collection and I’d love to see them go to a good home.”
Me: “!”
Him: “?”
Me: “!”
Him, forgetting the impression our recent intelligent and passionate conversation may have left and wondering, I am sure, if I was a nitwit: “I’ll bring a box by later.”
And he did. He brought me a box of books that made me happy enough to get my husband and our friends rolling their eyes again. David Attenborough’s THE LIVING PLANET and LIFE ON EARTH, RUBBISH, by William Rathje and Cullen Murphy and TAKING OUT THE TRASH, by Jennifer Carless, THE POPULATION EXPLOSION, by Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, LIVING DOWNSTREAM, by Sandra Steingraber, EARTH IN THE BALANCE, by Al Gore … and many more.
How to repay such an act of kindness? I’m not sure. But I decided an autographed copy of TRACKING TRASH was in order. I mean, the man has all that space on his bookshelf now …