Paper please

I’m a list person. I like to sit down with a notebook, write my to dos out neatly and then cross them out with black marker so that they can disappear from my sight forever. In a somewhat related reveal, I also write checks. Sure I check my account balance online just like everyone else, but I also keep my checkbook balanced and written on that little ledger. Why bother when our banks are doing it for us? Why write a list when you can just pop it into your smart phone and then hit delete? I do this because I’m holding on to the last days of paper.

I’m mourning the days when books and magazines, coloring books and post-it notes were the vehicle for the words and thoughts of others. It’s not that I don’t partake in the varieties of the world wide web, it’s just that, I’m not ready to release my beloved print into the cold dark night.

I often say that the reason I became an English major was because I loved to read. This is true enough, but the real reason is that I loved books. I dreamed of having my own personal library with floor to ceiling shelves filled with books, a ladder to carry me to the top where the precious treasures of first editions could sit out of harm’s reach (aka my destructive paper loving dog, Bailey), a comfortable, well-lit place to read, with a fireplace, or at the very least, a very powerful space heater at my disposal. I’m filled with nostalgia at the thought of the many books I’ve read to the point of having to tape their sad, hardback covers. I am saddened to think that one day children will not know that the stories they love were not always backlit on mommy’s new kindle, but rather, they once lived inside the musty hardback book on her shelves.

The funny thing is that I am describing the very reason why people are embracing online, or downloadable media. Who has the storage anymore for boxes of books? I myself cried as I dropped off 10 boxes to my local library when I realized I couldn’t possibly move them cross-country let alone store them in my new one bedroom apartment. (I have since learned about media mail and moved into a bigger place so my sorrow runs deep as I think of the books I sacrificed to the Sanford Public Library.) Who wants to spend their nights propping up a 1000 page paperback that will tear and no doubt give you “mommy’s wrist” as you cradle it in bed? Why comb through the shelves of a bookstore searching title after title for something you might like when Amazon will kindly put together a list of “things you might enjoy based on your recent searches?”

I do. I want all of those things. If only because it reminds me that there was a time when the art of writing was treasured. To own a book was a privilege not a chore. I want a place for my lists and my checkbook, and I hope it’s next to my very worn out copy of “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.”