THE COOL KID’S GUIDE TO READING: Wherein I give the abyss the beat down

It’s OK, O Best Ones. I’m back. I know it’s been difficult, waiting for the conclusion of last week’s column. I know you’ve suffered.

I know you’ve been counting the days ... good thing you have two hands.

Whoa! And one special finger, I see.

Enough of that. You don’t want to get into a war of wits with The Cool Kid. I’m the Mongol Golden Horde of smackdown.

Let’s be friends again, and together we can get to the end of this column before the biscuits are done.

As you recall, my iPad was acting out. I tried to reboot it -- thinking that would help. But it wouldn’t restart.

Bad, bad news. As Archimedes once so famously said: “Most of the books I read these days are ebooks.”

What to do? Only one thing, really. I waited for it to rain and went outside so no one could see my tears.

Then it occurred to me: my Kindle. Most of the books I had on my iPad would also be stored on my Kindle.

As Sammy Davis Jr. once so famously said: “Eureka!”

I hadn’t used my Kindle in a couple of years. But I dusted it off, figuratively speaking. Then I dusted it off literally. Mrs. Cool Kid didn’t look the least bit chagrined.

The battery was dead, natch. But I plugged it in and waited. And waited.

Waited and waited.

It was deader than them that anger Shaft.

It started raining again. I went outside again. I have my pride.

I tried to console myself. There’s always book books, I told myself. There’s always Gottwals.

So pondering a return to the troglodyte life, I went back inside.

And like someone looking in the same drawer again for the same missing keys, I tried one more time to boot up my iPad.

It came on.

I ran outside and danced in the pouring rain, flinging my tears of joy over all of God’s creation.

A story like this, O Best Ones, a story of near tragedy turned to triumph, this kind of story must have a moral.

And the moral of the story is this: I ain’t no band leader.

This story was originally published October 3, 2015 at 8:45 PM with the headline "THE COOL KID’S GUIDE TO READING: Wherein I give the abyss the beat down ."