Welcome to the Land of Expectations

In fifth grade, I encountered what would turn out to be one of the most enduring loves of my life. No, not some hot pre-adolescent, but a book: Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth. My teacher, Mrs. Langmeyer, decided to have the class read it as a project. Ultimately, we turned it into a play and performed it for all of City Honors School. Or maybe just all of the fifth grade. Memory is a tricky thing.

There was once a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself─ not just sometimes, but always.

When he was in school he longed to be out, and when he was out he longed to be in. [...] Nothing really interested him─ least of all the things that should have. *

Talk about an opening hook. The book goes on to describe how Milo comes home from school one day to a large box with an enveloped addressed "FOR MILO, WHO HAS PLENTY OF TIME." The box turns out to be a tollbooth, complete with tokens, a map, three precautionary signs ("to be used in a precautionary fashion") and "One (1) book of rules and traffic regulations, which may not be bent or broken."*

And with that, he is off on the adventure of a lifetime, one that challenges all of his assumptions, shifts his paradigms and generally reorders his life. The first place he comes to is Expectations, where he is met by the Whether Man.

"What kind of a place is Expectations," inquired Milo... "Good question, good question... Expections is the place you must always go to before you get to where you're going. Of course, some people never go beyond Expectations, but my job is to hurry them along whether they like it or not."*

Wow. I tell you, I love this book. I've probably bought six copies, because I keep giving them to people. It's a book I read every couple few years, just because my understanding of it changes according to what's going on in my world. Like that last paragraph for example. I've been reading that one for 30 years and it has just now hit home. Probably because I vacillate between having a summer home in Expectations and driving past it completely.

I know summer is drawing to an end (well, calendar-wise anyway─ we're stuck with this weather 'till Christmas), but you have time to squeeze in one more book.

For the record, I portrayed the Undersecretary of Understanding. You'll have to read the book to get the details.

Some other books I adored (and have spent my adult life re-procuring):

Mélisande (Margery Sharp and Roy McKie), "the pictorial memoir of... a dog... who becomes a famous opera singer and the darling of musical society." I loved this book waaaayy before I ever considered being a singer. How's that for prophetic? (Well, obviously not the part about the Met.)

James and the Giant Peach (Roald Dahl), which was later turned into a Tim Burton film. Pretty much all of Dahl's books are on the list.

Horace, the Friendly Octopus (Richard E. Drdek), a way before its time tale of what really makes a family.

If you didn't already know, I am a serious reader. I will read just about anything. My middle sister the Feng Shui Queen and Home Improvement Diva teased me for years because I found the deed to the house and got into it. It is mostly my mother's fault. She is and always has been a voracious reader and got me started somewhere around the age of 2 with a love of words and books. Then in third grade, Ms. Clements (truly a hipper teacher than any class deserved to have─ even in the '70s), read to us most afternoons. By then I was truly hooked. And hope to stay that way.

OK. The running of the toilet is yanking me back to reality.

*Juster, Norton. The Phantom Tollbooth. New York: Random House, 1961.