Tonight’s amusing conversation with the Handsome Marketboy

[annathepiper]

So there I am stopping by my marketboys on the way home for my evening round of tasty!fruit when I find that my favorite Handsome Marketboy has the stand all to himself. Hurray, I’m thinking, as he says hi and asks me how my day has gone.

I tell him I have to work tonight but a nice man is about to sell me blackberries and an avocado, so hey! And he asks me what I do with all the money.

Buy books, mostly, I say–because as you know, my children, some women buy purses or shoes, but me, I buy books!

Handsome Marketboy looks a bit boggled and asks, have I not heard of the library? It’s like Netflix, only for books! I explain that I want to Own All of the Books, because this man clearly has no conception of how much I read. I am, obviously, going to have to explain this to him. ;)

(After, of course, I buy All of the Blackberries. Because nom.)

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Comments

[paulwoodlin.livejournal.com]

Go easy on him. Chances are a guy with his job description uses the library because he can't afford to buy books. Assuming he really does read a lot.

[annathepiper]

You misunderstand: this isn't a slam on him, it's simply a statement of hoping he'll get to know me better as I explain why >I< love to buy books that much. :)

And believe me, I love the library myself--I use it semi-regularly for the books I'm not actually sure I want to own yet, and I've checked out both digital and print from the King County Library, which is beyond awesome!

[paulwoodlin.livejournal.com]

Yes, I both buy and borrow books myself, but if I was only borrowing books because I'm short on cash, I would be sensitive about the topic, so you wouldn't have to intentially "slam" me for me to feel slammed. On the other hand, if you were talking to my mother, who was a CPA, I'd say go for it.

[annathepiper]

I'm just confused as to where you think the guy in question might be taking insult from anything I mentioned in my post...?

I assume you don't actually know me or regularly follow my journal...? (Do you? I haven't seen you comment on my posts before.) So here's a bit of context: I visit this market on a daily basis and I'm getting to know the guys there pretty well. They're also getting to know me, and they're aware I'm a computer professional since I've mentioned testing web pages and such. The guy I mentioned in this post specifically brought up the topic of "what do I spend my money on?", so since he asked, I told him I buy books.

He proceeded to wax eloquently about the library. While I didn't get a chance to tell him at the time, if the topic comes up again, I fully intend to note that I do make semi-regular use of our local library system and shall ask him the same, and if he's a reader, start talking to him about books.

I honestly do not hold library use against him in the slightest, and am wondering what I said that gave you the impression that I might, or that I might somehow give this guy that impression...?

Believe me, I'm well aware that my current decent income is a privilege and I'm very grateful that I have enough disposable income to spend to buy books that I like. And I assure you, I'm not a bitch and I'm not going to snark at a guy who's got way less income than I do for going to the library instead of buying books. :) Especially, in this particular case, a guy I'm making friends with. But this isn't going to stop me from enthusing about buying books, either. He DID ask me what I spend my money on, so I told him!

[paulwoodlin.livejournal.com]

But doesn't this conversation show how easy it is to misunderstand someone if you don't know them very well? When you first meet someone, you often don't know until it is too late what is a sensitive topic. And yes, I only wandered onto your blog a couple of days ago by following a trail of interesting LJ comments, including yours. So here I've accidentally annoyed you, for which I'm sorry.

Perhaps I am projecting a trait of my own upon him; when money was tight for me I found people talking about spending money annoying. If he brought it up, apparently he doesn't. Now that I think about it, I always avoid reading about the spending habits of people in the income bracket above me; it leaves me discontent with the income I have.

[annathepiper]

Well, I was a little annoyed, I admit, but more I was just confused and genuinely trying to figure out if I said something myself that came across the wrong way. :) Thank you for explaining yourself, I much appreciate that! Apology happily accepted.

I'm definitely sympathetic about feeling twitchy about tightness of money. I come out of a childhood and adolescence where money was tight indeed, and I suspect that part of why I go so crazy buying books now that I'm an adult with my own disposable income is because I can, pretty much. But I'm not so far removed from my leaner childhood and teen years that I haven't forgotten what it's like to have to choose between buying even something as relatively inexpensive as a book, and buying food.

And now, let me offer you a belated welcome, and I hope we can get off on a better foot. :) Thank you for coming by to chat with me, and as we like to say in Great Big Sea fandom (if you stick around you'll see me post about GBS a LOT ;) ), "there's always room for more!"

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

"Hoping he'll get to know you better" uh huh I bet you are!

Hee, I hadn't noticed the 'tasty market boys are tasty' link til today :)

[annathepiper]

*whistles nonchalantly* *is not blushing, she SWEARS*

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Re the market boy and the books -- he sounds like my ex, who was a library director and saw absolutely no reason to buy books with his own money. When I left him, I had two very small boxes of books. I now (eighteen years later) have mostly full bookcases in every room of my condo except one of the two bathrooms (the other bathroom is combined with the laundry room off the kitchen and has a bookshelf with my cookbooks in it), for a total of five bookcases, the largest of which is 8 feet wide and tall.

[annathepiper]

Yeah, that's kind of the vibe I was getting from him, i.e., "wait, why are you actually bothering to spend money on books?" :)

I look forward to explaining "because I love to support my favorite authors by buying their work" and maybe finding out what he likes to read too.

[paulwoodlin.livejournal.com]

Oh, BTW, your comment about buying books reminded me of the best line from a movie "Ballistic" in which Lucy Liu and Antonio Banderas play covert ops agents. LL takes AB down to her batcave and he admires all the weapons. "WHere did you get all these guns?" he asks.

"Some women buy shoes."

Unfortunately I just gave away one of the two jokes in the movie.

[annathepiper]

*chortle* Excellent. :)