Dog-eared

I have this memory of being on a field trip in 5th grade, or rather, being on a bus with my class towards some intended educational destination.  The way i remember it, that destination  was a farm . I know in reality there was no farm . That's more a figment of time passing rather than an actual fact.

I know that I sat on that bus backwards, with my back pressed against cracked brown vinyl, legs and butt squished together  on the proper bench and my nose pressed deep into a book.

My teacher later remarked to my mother that it was something admirable and frankly, amusing, to see me so hell-bent on finish a chapter or two while everyone around me sang along to pop songs on the out of range radio and determined their futures with slips of paper coded M.A.S.H.

Someone recently told me that I was the worst kind of book owner for dog-earing my pages, hinting that the pristine nature of an unblemished book was somehow superior sitting on a shelf.

Like getting ( and subsequently regretting) bangs and using copious amount of eight dollar nail polishes called things like Bahama Mama and Bikini-so-Teeny, what belongs to us is liable to be modified by us.

I had the walls of my old room painted a bright celery green for the same reason I cut my nails so short that I have trouble opening bottles of contact solution—they are lived in things.

I dog-ear my pages because my books are well loved—they are just as lived in as my own body.