Encyclopedias

I got the oddest flashback today at work. My recent order of 2009 World Book Encyclopedias arrived at my school library today and as I was unboxing them, I suddenly remembered back to when I was a kid. Around ten, I guess. I was a cub scout or webelos and the pack was lingering at someone's house for the weekly meeting. We either hadn't begun an activity, had just finished one, or the activity was so craptacular, we were bored.

At any rate, one of the scouts started in on another, the pack leader's son, when all the adults seemed distracted. He started making fun of him for, get this, reading too much. Stupidity and ignorance remains highly valued even in today's United States, so not much has changed in twenty years. Anyway, the insulting scout said a bunch of stuff, most of which I can't remember, but the one line I do recall, and will likely never forget, is the the crack about the pack leader's son reading the A encyclopedia cover to cover.

I guess that was pretty insulting back in the day because the accused scout sheepishly denied it over the pack's hooting and hollering. As a kid, I thought long and hard about that insult. Both why someone would ever read an encyclopedia like a book and why someone could be made fun of for doing it. I never did come to any remarkable revelation about it. I don't think the memory provides any insight, except as a snapshot to a time that seems light years ago to me. It almost makes my head swoon thinking that some freshly printed reference books could so seamlessly trigger an obscure memory more than twenty years old.

Puzzling and amusing stuff.