Strong Verbs Are Just Better

Occasioned by sending my boss a copy of The Problem of Susan (which is cited in my PhD, don't even ask):

I was about fifteen when Dad borrowed ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ out of the library. He read ‘Chivalry’ and immediately thought ‘Amy must read this!’ but couldn’t bring himself to give me the book. He read Chivalry aloud to me (it’s brilliant read aloud) and then was like ‘but I can’t give you the rest of the book’.

Me: why?
Dad: it’s just. It’d make me uncomfortable.
Mum: R, what are you reading?
Dad: it’s not that bad! She’d probably like it! There’s this great Snow White retelling, but it’s. It’s got some things. I can’t just give it to my daughter.
Me: uhuh.

So I waited until Dad went away for work for a few weeks, and then got the local mobile library truck guy to order it in for me (at 15 I had free interlibrary loans). When he got back it was lying on the kitchen table.

Dad: you read Smoke and Mirrors?
Me: You said you couldn’t give it to me, you didn’t say I couldn’t read it.
Dad: True.
Me: It was a great Snow White story.
Dad: Yup.
Both of us: *look into each other’s eyes and know that means we both have also read the same sci-fi erotica*
Dad: SO ABOUT THAT BEOWULF ONE. WEIRD, HUH?

And I think that’s how I first found out about that Beowulf was a medieval poem I should care about: because I hadn’t understood Gaiman’s weird eighties-LA-beach-culture retelling, and wasn’t going to let that kind of thing slip past me again.