Inspired

 A great many of these blog posts come to me first as ideas while I am running. Today was a bit more circuitous. The first inkling I had was not for a bit of writing. There may have been something tangentially glancing off, since so many of my notions become stories. This is one of those. 

My idea was about making one of those little libraries. You have probably seen them around your neighborhood. According to the Free Little Library website, there are more than one hundred fifty thousand registered Free Little Libraries in one hundred twenty different countries. They are tiny sheds filled with books that are there to be picked up, read, returned, or moved to another location. You can even It's a way to stir the big pot of literature that might otherwise remain still and stagnant. 

Over a few days, I had been thinking it would be fun to have my own Free Little Library to curate. But first I would have to build it. There is a comforting sameness to the construction of most of the tiny sheds, but when I went online to see about plans or a kit to piece one together for my own, I was treated to a number of clever variations on the theme. 

And that is where my mind wandered while I was running. I thought about all the possible existing structures that I might adapt to the purpose of holding used books for strangers to peruse. A box. With a door. I thought of the defective microwave oven sitting in our basement. How hard would it be to convert that metal box with a door into a Little Free Library? 

My wife, who administered First Aid when I needed it will tell you that it turned out to be a bit of a bloody mess. Using a hacksaw blade on my reciprocating saw, tin snips, and a screwdriver to cut, snip and bend the guts of what used to be a household appliance to my vision eventually rendered that former household appliance into a twisted piece of wreckage.

Not a Free Little Library. It would have been so cool. I was even going to create little pretend LED letters to paste where the timer was that spelled out READ. It would have been another bit of whimsy in an already whimsical corner of our neighborhood. 

Instead, it was a funny idea I had while I was out running. That turned out to be a mildly amusing blog post. We call this a "win-win" situation. Except for the band-aids.