The Unexpected Benefit of Bookworminess

As a geeky bookworm of a teenager, I always used to imagine that I would meet the great love of my life in a bookstore or a library. Our eyes would meet over a shelf of Dragonlance novels, or our hands would brush as we reached unsuspectingly for the same copy of The Hobbit. I can’t say I truly ever believed it would happen, but I wished it would. What good would it possibly have done for me to be with a non-reader? We’d have had nothing to talk about.

(That, by the way, was one of the things that should have been a clue to me that the relationship with my ex-H was a bad idea; he had no books at all!)

Well, it wasn’t in a bookstore or library, but instead across an internet message board, but it did happen. A most vital reason that Tirithien and I fell in love was a long, ongoing cyber conversation about different books we’d read, particularly the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Now, these would have to rank among my favorite books of all time. I can’t explain exactly why (people have asked). The beauty of Tolkien’s language and the thrills of the story itself don’t go quite far enough. It’s just that there’s some chord that the tale plucks on the harpstrings of my soul that resonates in a way that few other things ever have.

So in our ongoing conversation, little drops of Middle Earth would appear. A description of dealing with some rude folks as “slaying orcs,” or a description of a particularly beautiful valley that “could have been part of Rivendell.”

It was like speaking a secret language, a language I thought I’d been alone in knowing, and discovering to my surprise someone else whose thoughts were shaped in the same words, someone else whose ideals and dreams had been shaped by songs of honor and glory.

So no, it wasn’t a bookstore or library. But it was the fulfillment of a dream, just the same. And if two geeky bookworms can meet and fall in love, there’s hope for anyone. ;-)

Tye melan, kolanya. Tye melan.