Tea and Encyclopedias

It was a regular routine for me most Friday nights.

Usually I got done with watching “T.G.I.F.” on ABC, absorbing the family sitcoms proffered by the network in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

Around 10pm or so, as the theme music for “20/20” was firing up, I would go select a book off of one of the bookshelves. It was the same shelf each time; I am just struggling to remember if the bookshelf was in the living room or my bedroom. I would grab a book. There wasn’t usually any rhyme or reason to the choice I was making.

I’d go back to the kitchen with my selection for the evening. I’d fire up the stove and put on some water to boil. Basic Lipton black tea—nothing fancy, nothing herbal. A little sugar and some milk made for a nice soothing beverage for late-night reading.

I’d settle into a chair, or rather, settle in as much as you can settle into the chair that is part of a dining room table set. I’d crack open the book and start to read.

Oh yeah, did I mention that the book was almost always a volume of the early 1980s World Book Encyclopedia? My nerdiness knew no boundaries even back then.

 

 

 

I did it to myself. My social awkwardness around members of the opposite gender started at that time. Yeah, I attended the monthly mixer that my all-male high school sponsored, standing around against the wall of the auditorium listening to bands or down in the cafeteria, listening to a DJ spin the best in early 90’s slow jams and dance songs. Hell, I even wrote a song about it:

MILQUETOAST

He spies her from the corner

The corner of the room he’s sitting in

He wants to go talk to her

But he doesn’t know where to begin

This isn’t something new

This happens every day

He just wishes he could make

This feeling go away

Look at the milquetoast

The object of ridicule

The wimp, the coward

The fool, the one without a clue

Look at the milquetoast

The downtrodden one

It’s very hard for him

To have any fun

Look at the milquetoast

He’s paralyzed by fear

He’s afraid to move from his spot

He’s worried that if he goes over

He’s going to get shot

Down

So he sits on his side of the room

Looking down, feeling blue

Trying hard to avoid the gloom

From not doing what he wants to do

 

Look at the milquetoast

The object of ridicule

The wimp, the coward

The fool, the one without a clue

Look at the milquetoast

The downtrodden one

It’s very hard for him

To have any fun

Look at the milquetoast

Look at the milquetoast

The object of ridicule

The wimp, the coward

The fool, the one without a clue

Look at the milquetoast

The downtrodden one

It’s very hard for him

To have any fun

Look at the milquetoast

And there was the occasional group outing with folks from either musicals I was in or people I knew. Oh, and I cannot forget the long-distance calls to my friend across the river in Teaneck, New Jersey, although those didn’t really take place on Friday nights. That was more of a Monday-Thursday running up of the phone bill.

 
For the most part, though, my Fridays were spent at home alone.
 
Although I guess there was a positive outcome to those many Friday nights at home: it did lead me, in a way, to a successful stint on Jeopardy! several years ago.

So I had that going for me. Which was nice.

 
The funny thing is, I still manage to get lost in encyclopedias. Granted it’s Wikipedia, which means you have to take some of the articles with a grain of salt. However, I cannot deny that I can literally go to look up one thing on Wikipedia and then enter a spiral of clicks and following links that leads me 15 articles deep and struggling to remember why I even went to the site in the first place. I actually find those times, lost in thought and in reading random factoids exhilarating.
 
Even though today, I do it without tea.