Text Messages
BOOKFRIENDS
May 29, 10:11 PM
BookshopGirl: To celebrate making it through an exceptionally shitty day, would you like to play a game?
RJ.Reads: Always.
BookshopGirl: Badly describe one of your favorite childhood books. Go!
RJ.Reads: Let’s see. A bear with a binge-eating disorder, a pig with generalized anxiety, and a donkey with clinical depression have adventures in a forest.
BookshopGirl: Winnie the Pooh?
RJ.Reads: Yep! My mom read it to me when I was little.
BookshopGirl: Lucky. I have no memories of my mother reading to me. But she only read bodice rippers, so that’s probably a good thing. Anyway, my turn! Let me think…
BookshopGirl: OK, got it. Misanthropic chocolatier lures children to factory powered by forced indigenous labor, resulting in the death and/or injury of nearly all the children while said indigenous laborers sing cautionary songs.
RJ.Reads: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
BookshopGirl: Ding ding ding! Too easy?
RJ.Reads: My 4th grade teacher read it aloud to us. Thinking about it brings back memories of prepubescent body odor.
BookshopGirl: Yuck?
RJ.Reads: It’s funny, because at the time I thought Willy Wonka was this magical whimsical guy…but now I think maybe he was the villain.
BookshopGirl: Wonka wasn’t the villain. The real villain is Grandpa Joe.
RJ.Reads: What?!?
BookshopGirl: The man lies in bed for twenty years, allowing his poor daughter-in-law to break her back caring for him! Until Charlie gets that golden ticket. Then Grandpa Joe jumps right out of bed and dances a fucking jig.
RJ.Reads: Damn. I never thought about it that way.
BookshopGirl: He’s a lazy, malingering freeloader who tagged along with Charlie and nearly ruined everything. Tell me I’m wrong.
RJ.Reads: You’re not wrong.
BookshopGirl: I knew I liked you.