i used to get those daily far side calendars that would sit on your desk. best as i can recall, my mother gave me one every christmas they were ever issued. me being me, i never threw any of the pages away. i'd just pull them, read them and then stack them neatly in some corner of some drawer of my desk. when marty and i got married and moved into our home she came upon a box full of the residual sheets. she asked me what they were. i told her. she asked me why i had them. i told her that too. she asked me if she could throw them out. appalled i took the box from her hands and said no. she asked why we should keep them. thinking for a moment and trying to meet marty's practical side, i said we could use them for scratch paper. marty gave it a fractional thought, shrugged her shoulders, said fine, and told me to put the box over there. that was nine years ago and we're still using them today.
whenever i use one, before marking up the backside, i flip it over, read the comic recycling the good it had, sense the pulse of nostalgia from the moment, and then resume my business. the other day i saw marty snare a sheet off the stack and start scratching a note out without reading it. i stopped her:
TROY
hey, you're supposed to read the comic on the backside before you use it.
MARTY
what?
TROY
the paper you're using. it's an old far side comic. before you use them you're supposed to read the comic ... because it's still funny ... and it gets enjoyed again.
MARTY (pausing long enough to look at me, then at the sheet, then back to me)
yeah, that's not going to happen.
there are multiple flavors of candor, marty employs the extra-lean, time-sensitive kind.
