May 30, 2026
This was kind of an odd day at the bookstore. A man in his 60s bought a copy of “Mary Poppins,” while a father bought his 12-year-old a book she fell in love with, “The Complete Book of Knife Fighting.”
My first customer was a cybersecurity guy whose wife thought he needed a visit to a bookstore to reduce his stress. They were a fun couple to talk to, and judging by the stack of books he built on the counter, he was able to relieve a lot of stress, and I was able to relieve him of some disposable income.
A couple brought in some books to sell, and several bore the penciled markings from a Printed Page bookseller named Lyman, who died several years ago. Lyman could talk to anyone about anything, and it was always a pleasure to be around him. Lyman had been an attorney who had the strongest sense of justice I’ve ever seen in someone.
He told me that as a kid, a classmate named Billy always struggled with spelling. The teacher would read spelling test scores aloud, always perversely delighting in emphasizing that Billy always came in last.
That bothered Lyman, so one day, he told his friends that they needed to help Billy. He assigned each a word from the weekly spelling list and told each friend to spell it for Billy every time they saw him. On test day, the teacher, visibly pained, read Billy’s score — it was tops in class. And when she announced that, the entire class cheered and leapt out of their seats, clapping.
Never again did the teacher read the spelling scores.
I miss Lyman. And seeing some his books come home made me miss him even more.