Congratulations Adult Phantom Tollbooth Lover!

If you’re an adult and you love The Phantom Tollbooth, there’s nothing wrong with you. Far from it, you’re totally normal. But if you’re an adult and you talk about loving The Phantom Tollbooth all the time, you’re kinda weird.

It’s not that the book doesn’t warrant sustained thought, or that we’re not thinking about it right now. That shit is hot, and it stays with you for a lifetime.

It’s just that adults are supposed to suppress their feelings all the time, especially with regards to literature. If you like a work of literature you’re supposed to be either kind of catty and high handed about it, or to shut up and read it three or four times a year in accordance with the rules of hermitry outlined by J.D. Salinger in the mid-ninties.

It’s not the right way for the world to be, though, and you know it. Which is why today it’s going to be such a relief when your daughter turns seven, and is finally old enough to read and begin to discuss The Phantom Tollbooth.

You’ll give her a copy of the book, wrapped in a ribbon, for her birthday, today. Then you’ll wait for her to talk to you about it. You won’t want to chance ruining a single part of that incredible book for her.

When she comes out of her room, dazed a few days later, wiping tears and sleeplessness from her eyes, she’ll look up at you with wonderment.

“Was any of it real, daddy?” she’ll yawn.

You’ll smile back down at her.

“That’s a very good question.”

What follows will be one of the most enriching conversations of your life, adult or otherwise. It’ll be spectacular.

Congratulations Adult Phantom Tollbooth Lover!

Congratulations on Realizing Your Own Potential!

A lot of people spend years upon years looking for the careers that are right for them. Take, for instance, a banker who might not realize he loves money until he’s in his middle age, the autumn of his life. How much is that going to suck for him, realizing that he could’ve pursued one of the easiest and most lucrative careers imaginable if only he’d given up when he was younger?

You’re going to be a lot luckier. You’ve always known you wanted to be a cat burglar, ever since you were a young man. That first B&E, the rush of your first sale at a pawn shop where you knew you’d never be back in there to fence another piece of merch, the lightness in your feet as you ran from a resident the first time. It was all just what you’d always wanted.

But lately you’ve realized that without a calling card, without some sort of focus to your actions, you’re just a face in a crowd. And that’s not how you’d like to go down, as some two bit father of four and cat burglar who was never caught and never did anything interesting with his life. Which is why today is so important.

Because today while you’re casing an apartment for stuff to steal you’re going to see an elaborately constructed cat toy sitting on a velvet fringed pillow. Its purpose will be clear: to satisfy the curiosity of a cat that eats better on a daily basis than you do, despite its lack of a GED and opposable thumbs. Rage will well in your heart at the sight of these excesses, and you’ll snatch them up.

You’ll also steal any jewelry or laptops you see in the apartment, but you won’t think overmuch on those. They’ll go to your fence and you’ll eat for another month because of them. But the pillow you took, the cat toy, with its series of bells within bells within catnip shells, will make you feel some deep satisfaction.

Thus will begin your spree, your era of infamy, as a cat burglar who specializes in stealing cat toys and accessories, which you sometimes wittily refer to as “excessories.” The nightly news will have a field day with it, the police will spend years searching for you without success. You won’t tell a soul until your son comes of age, years from today, and you take him to a storage unit you rent in downtown Brooklyn. Once the two of you are inside you’ll begin telling him, in a hushed voice, that this is how you’ve made your mark on the world. You’ll describe that first day to him and his eyes will spark with recognition and respect for the first time.

It’ll be a good day to be a dad.

Congratulations on Realizing Your Own Potential!