This happens to me,....on the average....three or four times a year.
I was walking back to my truck across the parking lot. Typical
trucker.....beard...boots....overweight...but in one way I'm atypical.
I usually have a book. In this instance it was a hardback (Micheal Flynn's
"Lodestar") so it was visible....paperbacks are less obvious.
Carrying a book is an identifying factor apparently....it sets us apart....we
not only CAN read...but we do it for pleasure. Obviously....because the
stuff truckers read "professionally" don't look anything like novels.
So.....book reading truckers identify each other and congregate...and discuss
what they read.
I'm a rarity even among book readers.....I read Science Fiction. Not
fantasy....not westerns....not mystery.....(although they will do in a
pinch....ANY book is better than No book).....so when they ask me what I'm
reading....it gets puzzeled responses...
To make a long story short.....me and this other guy stood in the middle of
the parking lot for maybe an hour......in that time I gave him a crash
course on a few extropian topics (orbital towers, cloneing,
uploading.....etc.).....all from a SF vantage.
Toward the end there he was looking a little bit like a deer in the
headlites....
He's hooked though.....infected.
EvMick
Mt. Vernon Illinois..
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