Another world, another time

In the age of wonder, our books were made of paper. I love the way my old books smell. It seems to be some quality of the paper, the ink, and perhaps even a bit of Mom's old cigarette smoke.

I pick one off the shelf every now and then to read through it. Most of the books Michelle and I have are high school and college era. I typically kept my receipt to use as a bookmark. A part of me looked forward to the nostalgia of looking at it again.

I'm surprised my copy of Walden is nearly 20 years old now. I bought it for a couple dollars at the now-defunct Media Play in Morrow, whose phone number didn't need to include an area code, with 5% sales tax. The receipt is printed on a dot matrix. For some reason I actually had $2.31 in cash too.