I was at the local Goodwill store the other day, looking through books for some cheap reads when an idea suddenly came to me. An epiphany of epic proportions. For every book I took that so thrilled me as a child, from JRR Tolkein’s Hobbit to The Martian Chronicles I was stealing that same experience from some poor kid whose parents couldn’t afford $8.99 a shot to spark their child’s imagination which would one day enable him/her to leave their life of poverty behind. Every time bargain hunters like myself head to the local Salvation Army and pay 25 cents for a book, we’re stealing some kid’s dream; smothering their imagination, their joy of discovery and killing any hope these poor, impoverished children have of any escape. That is the escape reading a book brings to a kid and later the escape their fueled by books intellect will bring them. For every cheap book we buy, those of us that can afford to buy them at regular store prices are snuffing out a child’s hopes, dreams and imagination (as well as their futures.)

Buying a cheap Harry Potter book, or literary classics like Homer’s The Odyssey, Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot and true novels of great import like those by Harold Robbins, ensures that the poor kids behind you won’t get to experience the joy of discovery that reading them brings. Each cheap book we buy is one less for these kids to read! Without exposure to good cheap books these poor children will have no hope, no future and we’ll be responsible for limiting their chances to rise above their situations. Crushers of Imagination. Impalers of Discovery. Dashers of Dreams. How does that make YOU feel, fellow bargain hunters?

Me, I can live with that.

You see, despite all the times people say it, kids are not the future. Not anymore. Sure, my generation was the future for my parents and the grownups of that day but WE are here to stay. See, WE‘ve made plans for the generations of kids coming after us so that they wouldn’t and couldn’t take what was ours. Schools are not as good as they used to be, housing costs are skyrocketing out of control way past the average workers’ salaries, the cost of living is soaring while the educational system (ie public schools which used to be good) is in an intellectual death-spiral; cranking out kids that are academically inept and rabid underachievers. Plus thanks to what WE‘ve been whispering in their parents ears these kids are all about instant-gratification, self-entitlement and no concept about the future save that they’re supposed to be it. Wacked out on Ritalin, diagnosed with drug-company invented ADHD diagnoses (*snicker*, that’s a good one drug companies *snicker*), they’re also downing enough anti-depressants (for hyperactivity) to make an elephant narcoleptic, combined with their having no immune system to speak of thanks to parental units who requested antibiotics for the freaking sniffles, these kids won’t be in any shape to be anyone’s future.

See, WE play for keeps.

So you know what? Don’t worry about grabbing those cheap copies of The Grapes of Wrath, Stranger in a Strange Land or Lord of the Rings. You’re not robbing a kid of their future. They probably couldn’t have read them anyways…