Banned Book

Banned Book

“And the clock struck thirteen,” I said as our clock in the dining room struck the one o’clock hour.

“What? There are no thirteens on clocks. You’re wrong, or the clock is broken again. That antique piece of crap. Time to take it back to that guy?”

Julia didn’t get it, but then, she rarely did. Here we go, another explanation.

“I read it in a book. Don’t you remember it? ‘1984’? “George Orwell? A book about a world where the clocks strike thirteen instead of one, war is peace, Big Brother is watching and so on?”

She looked at me quizzically. I guess she really did not know what I was talking about.

“I think we have a copy around here somewhere. You need to read it. It’s a banned book.”

Now she had a look of horror, eyes wide. “Winston, if it’s banned, then why is it in this house? What if someone finds it? Will we go to jail? Find it and burn it!”

Then Julia started to scurry about, pulling books from the shelves, scanning titles, making piles. I could see a trip to the dump in our future.

I honestly didn’t know where it was. Perhaps we still did have that old copy, the one from 1960. The old paperback that had a price of 60 cents on the cover. If we still did, I will personally put it in a safe deposit box at the bank. Guard it from harm, from people like Julia.

W/C 250