Showing posts with label bowling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bowling. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Not Bowling, and Not Alone

Day 225, of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and a nice young dark-haired man is reading Bowling Alone, by Robert D. Putnam, because a nice young red-haired man found it for him, in Babbitt's, where I work.

The dark-haired man had been in the day before, and saw the book on a stack on the floor in front of the non-fiction New Arrivals shelf, but now it was gone.

"Is it really about bowling?" I asked, sensing that, indeed, it was not.

"No," he said, and explained that it was an important work of sociology. I then explained where he would be likely to find it, but I also advised checking in Miscellaneous Sports, or on the floor in front of that section, just in case!

Which is, indeed, where the red-haired young man found it.  Who sweetly, quietly brought it to the front of the store and gave it to the dark-haired young man.  Because 1) we are not bowling alone and 2) a sociologist in deed is a sociologist indeed.  (And I do hope the red-haired young man, in town applying for a job teaching sociology at the local university, gets that job!!)  "It's a classic work in sociology," said this young man,  "and you know it when you see it."