I especially like the hungry moose and the deserving porcupine

Happy birthday, star_eyed_lady!

I'd felt so bad because I happen to be extremely poor right now and at a bad time: evil_grapefruit's birthday was yesterday and Sarah Jean's is Friday. They all got me birthday presents (chocolate truffles, frog slippers, and kazoos!--most wonderful presents) and I felt bad about not giving any of them anything, even though they know it's just because I happen to have no money now.

But that became slightly less true today, and so since I was in the bookstore anyway looking at books and such, I thought I could get Al a book. Al got me a book for Christmas, and I like it a lot. We're book people. I looked around, but I didn't find anything that really caught my eye.

Then I found myself in front of the section of children's books. The Lorax! Shel Silverstein! A Wrinkle in Time...I'd loved that book, even though I was too young to understand it all when I first read it. Gary Paulsen, one of my favorite writers since fifth grade, was there, and my beloved Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day. I didn't really want to give that as a gift, though; it seemed a bad thing to say about someone's birthday.

Then I saw Harold and the Purple Crayon. I picked it up. I grinned. I was late for class because I wanted to buy it; I had to wait in a slow line at the bookstore. I sat through creative writing--read my Western Haiku about the icebox!--and then went to find Al. I tossed her book and the card I'd bought her ("Let's go bowling in Canada. That way, when we are old, we'll be able to say 'Remember when we went bowling in Canada?' ").

"Harold and the Purple Crayon! How did you know that was my favorite?"

"Uh...I don't think I did," I answered lamely. "I just picked it up because I liked it, and hoped somehow that you would too."

Then Al told me that Harold and the Purple Crayon had been her favorite book as a little kid--a really little kid--and that her parents had gotten rid of it along with some other little-kid books once she and her brother were older, and she'd been disappointed.

(Sorta reminds me of John Mayer.
"whatever happened to my whatever happened to my
whatever happened to my lunchbox
when came the day that it got
thrown away and don't you think I should
have had some say in that decision")

I'd had reservations about getting someone a seemingly random birthday present for which she was a little too old, but I could hardly have hoped for a better reaction. It's nice when things work out sometimes.