Chad Love: Spontaneous Monkey-Wrenching

heaveybook

I hate to follow a book-themed blog post too closely with another book-themed blog post, but this one is just too good to pass up.

This weekend found me not on the water or throwing bumpers for the dogs but killing time at yet another national chain bookseller waiting on my wife’s flight to arrive in Oklahoma City. And since I’m not a violence-prone alcoholic duffer I passed right by the Father’s Day display on my way toward the “Forgotten Man” section of the book store.

As I was perusing what few shelves the corporate book Borg had seen fit to dedicate to the arcane, unhip and marginalized pastimes of unevolved louts like myself I saw them – five brand-new paperback copies of Bill Heavey’s If You Didn’t Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat? But something was wrong. Bad wrong. To the left of Heavey I saw Les Stroud’s (of Survivorman fame) face staring up at me. To Heavey’s right there was a book with a cover featuring Bear Grylls squeezing the last precious drops of moisture from an elephant’s testicle as he prepared to cross the Sahara on foot and butt-nekkid (or something like that).

Confused, I looked at the tab on the shelf to confirm what section I was in, and then it – hilariously – dawned on me: Someone, somewhere in this bookstore chain’s corporate labyrinth had apparently decided If You Didn’t Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat? was a…survival manual. After I picked myself up off the floor I decided this injustice simply couldn’t stand. Like most of you I know Mr. Heavey only through his writing, and while I’m sure you could glean any number of invaluable survival tips in his book it deserved better placement than that.

So I looked around to make sure no one was looking, grabbed all five copies and headed for the Father’s Day display. Casting furtive glances toward the nose-ringed staff, I quickly replaced all the copies of Mixed-Martial Arts Techniques for the Golf Course: A Guide to Conflict Resolution with If You Didn’t Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat?

I admired my literary monkey-wrenching for a moment, shoved the copies of the switched book in the “Relationships” section and walked out the door feeling quite proud of myself.