A is for Alice In Wonderland

When I was 8 or 9 my par­ents’ friend came to visit us from Canada.  I loved it when he’d visit because he always brought presents.  Not lit­tle tourist trin­kets either — he shopped at Har­rods.  On this visit, he gave me a red, leather-bound book of Alice in Wonderland.

I’d never owned a book any­where near as fancy as that.  And I’m not sure if it was for that rea­son, or for some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent, I never read it.

Alice in Won­der­land moved with me through house moves and sat, quite proudly on my book­shelf.  Unread until about 5 years ago when I decided to read the book to my sons.

Each evening I’d read a chap­ter or two. They’d sit next to me, eyes wide in amaze­ment of the adven­tures Alice found her­self in.  They gig­gled, they gasped then they pleaded with me to read Through the Look­ing Glass.

And do you know what? I detested that book.  Every turn of the page filled me with the dread that over­leaf there was more gib­ber­ish.  I hoped my sons would for­get about the book and want me to read some­thing else, any­thing else, but they didn’t.

I would seri­ously con­sider turn­ing down an obscene amount of money as a bribe to read it again.  A is for Alice in Won­der­land.  A also stands for awful.