4COL

I sent Daydreamer across the street and down the block to the library to get a novel. He's supposed to always have one in progress. He came busting through the screen door half an hour later.

Me: "What'd you get?"

He held up TTYL.

I blanched.

Him: "What?"

I forced my nose to unpucker and said, "Nothing." When he was done explaining how he'd picked it (mostly because of the brightly colored cover), I said, "That doesn't count as a novel, though, 'cause it's not . . . written . . . in English."

He was absorbed in it by then. I prompted him with, "Understand?" He muttered an I'm-actually-reading-and-barely-hear-you yes.

I blinked rapidly. This is not the end of the world. Not at all. We will go back to the library together later to fix this. We will. Maybe I'll start requiring him to always have an old novel in progress. Five or six years old.