On Reading, Riddles, and Conundrums:

Below is a humorless riddle of my own creation.

Question: What do you call a writer who doesn’t read?

Answer: A blogger.

I grew up in a family of readers, and used to read all the time. I won spelling bees in elementary school and later read War and Peace in (3) days. That was 20 years ago, back when I tried to make it as a surveillance investigator. Ha! I was so bad at that. I’d always lose guys or miss them. Like in this case. Turned out my subject had been out of town three days before I even arrived. Yet I sat parked outside his house and read War and Peace. My company took a bath on that one. Hope it was a good book Lodo!

When I first moved to New York I’d read on the train. That was my book time. My intermission between destinations here and there. Always with a book as I rode the rails; Brooklyn to the Bronx and back again.

Unless I was going to Queens.

A few years after I moved to New York I got in a car accident. I herniated (2) discs in my back and after that I stopped carrying a book. I didn’t want to lug any extra weight since I already carry notepads, two cameras, two cellphones, a tape measure, a tape recorder, subpoenas; plus all my files. So I stopped carrying a book and assumed I’d just read at home.

But then Ms. Lulu turned me on to Blogspot and all I did at home was write and blog.

After a long while my back started to get better. It took a good three years, but I stuck with my physical therapy and never missed an appointment.

My physical therapist was a big, young kid. Blonde as a Viking with thick calves and red knuckles. He was paid for by my company’s health plan. I remember one day early in my treatment we’d gone through my routine of stretches and exercises much like you see these hot chicks doing below.

There were others as well, I had a whole routine I did 3x a week.

One day during my routine I asked my therapist,

“Hey man, are these stretches that I’m doing or should I approach them as exercises?”

At first he looked at me absently as he wrote notes in my chart, but then suddenly snapped to attention as though his ears had been pricked.

“What did you ask me?” he said with a furrowed brow as he turned to directly face me.

“I said are these exercises that I’m doing or are they stretches?”

Well reader, that kid’s jaw just dropped open. As though I’d presented him with a conundrum of profound proportions.

“Are they stretches or exercises?” he repeated aloud as he slammed his pen into the folder and closed it. “You know Lodo,...I don’t know.”

And with that he walked away, perhaps to ponder the question.

Well reader, either despite or because of that kid, I got better; and now I can even carry a book. Course I have very specific standards.

For example my friend Rules out in Denver recently bought me Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. Its a book I’ve wanted to read for awhile now--or thought I did; but once I got it I realized it wasn’t for me. Instead I chose to read The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams.

“How come you don’t like Freedom?” Rules asked me when she realized I still hadn’t read it. “The other one’s that much better?”

A fair assumption reader. In fact the investigator in me applauds the simple logic of her thinking. But as it turned out, her logic wasn’t simple enough.

“Naw, it’s not that. Its just that Freedom's too big for me to carry.”

Thanks for the birthday present Rules. Gonna try to read it this long weekend.