Lafcadio, The Lion Who Shot Back

I've cornered myself in a bad situation but I didn't want to think about that today; now that exams are done I have too much time to think, so I went walking down to Queen St. I guess you don't know what Queen St looks like Internet, when I say Queen St that doesn't mean anything to you even if for me it carries memories and history and a whole back story that you are missing out on when I name drop this street. It's nice street, a quasi-hip commercial strip full of mom and pop joints and chic restaurants and there's a real sense of community going around and I wish you could live here too because for my money there isn't a better neighbourhood in Toronto than the Beaches, even if it is whiter than white, and the houses require minimum deposits of first born children and the old people insist on calling it the Beach which is a stupid pet peeve of my but it is just such an awkward name for the neighbourhood but you just know that if the Beaches Business Improvement Area folks ever get their act together and get us street signs that label our neighbourhood like every other single 'hood in Toronto does, that those signs will say "The Beach" and not "The Beaches" because old people are the ones who get crotchety about that kind of thing and write angry letters to the community papers and their city councilor and everybody else is just kinda meh about it. I wish I could bring you into the argument here and make you care about the troubles of a small, upper-middle class neighbourhood on the outskirts of downtown Toronto but that seems unlikely.

Right, so I went walking on Queen St, which is an upscale commercial street and just lovely for walking on especially on cold December afternoons when the sky is blue and the air is crisp but not so bad that you can't leave the jacket unzipped. I went into a bookstore, an independent chain that has nothing to do with the Chapters/Indigo Big Book monopoly, unlike the little Coles five minutes in the other direction, which is I guess the brand name they use when they don't have room to drop a megastore on the corner. Bookstores are great. I'll drop my resume into this place one day. When the university career doesn't pan out I'll fall back on the indie book store. Yes.

Have you ever read Shel Silverstein? I hope the answer is yes. The Giving Tree and Where the Sidewalk ends and much, much more importantly, Lafcadio, The Lion Who Shot Back. These books should be required reading for kids. If you have kids, you'd do them, and probably yourself a favour by picking them up. When I was in elementary school there was one teacher who we all considered to be a walking rock star. He was the lone man on staff and we all venerated him and called him Sir whenever we addressed him and it was every students' goal, from the moment they met him, to get into his class for grade six. I was not placed in his class but it was as if the teachers understood the importance of this man, and even though he was not our teacher for that final year of elementary school, we still spent much time in his class room learning social studies and life lesson and much, much more importantly, listening to him read us Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back. We'd gather with giddy anticipation because this was not the first time he would read us this story, and it would not be the last and he would launch into that great Lafcadio roar and Silverstein's wit and humour and Sir's energy and enthusiasm would spellbind us so that our requests for Lafcadio never ended.

I think Sir retired a few years after I left which is a great loss for so many children who will never hear him roar and bellow and will never see him smile or give you that gentle encouragement that would allow you to run a marathon if he only asked you to.

I was in the back of this bookstore and there was a shelf full of Shel Silverstein and it occurred to me that even though his books are some of the greatest children's lit ever made I did not have any that I could call my own and I then thought, could I give any of them as a gift to my little brothers?, and I mean I could, but I know that the books, wonderful as they are, would not have been appreciated by those two cretins, at least not appreciated in the reverential way that is only befitting Shel and so I decided I would not give them as gifts because I would hate for my brothers, who have rocky relationships with books as is, to grow up resenting The Missing Piece just because of that one Christmas where they received it instead of another video game. So I bought Lafcadio for myself, a Christmas present pour moi, and it was all I could do not to just grab every book on the shelf, sweep them into my arms and then dump them triumphantly on the counter. But reality sucks and I don't have the money to invest in a Shel Silverstein complete set, even if that would please me to no small end and I have to urge you, no matter you age to go down to your public library today and check out whatever they have by Silverstein because you cannot be disappointed by what you find.

The lady at the counter couldn't help but smile too and she told me how badly she loved Lafcadio and how her copy was so badly worn down with hard love and I don't know if she was flirting with me or she just really, really loved that book, but I'm ok with that because it really is a book that you can cherish and it may help that I have so many warm memories infused into that hard cover with the sparse drawing of a cowering lion and man, that perhaps other readers might not but when I think about it more, I ask myself, what am I doing writing this when I could be reading that?

Good night

Halpern