"It's like loving a god, or a step parent. You never really feel them love you back, but that's ok, they got other stuff going on and you understand."

I took G to the doctor for allergy eyes (The first morning I totally thought it was pink eye for like 20 minutes and I was plotting which one of my breast feeding friends would most likely donate some milk to put in my kid's eye.  I'll go there.) and she was in a crankster mood due to the attention being paid to the part of her body that was inflamed and itchy and hurt! and just wanted to be left the eff alone.  So I broke my cardinal rule of touching the very least possible in the doctor's office and agreed to read the 2 books in the wire rack hanging on the wall.  Both were by Beatrix Potter, one was the tale of the Flopsy Bunnies and the other was an abridged version of Peter Rabbit.  She adored them both and I recalled seeing something Peter Rabbit like on our bookcase at home so I promised her I'd look into it and let her know.  

We'd just recently been burned big time by Beatrix, it seems my Grandmother gave me 2 books in 1986 according to the inscriptions.  The first, The Tale Mrs Tiggy-Winkle I vaguely remembered, but I think it was from when I was nannying kids at my house and I read it to them.  The second, The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck is the one G asked me to read and I had no recollection of ever reading.  

It's awful, don't read it.  The duck was looking for a place to sit on her own eggs, apparently the farmer wouldn't let her and kept taking them to have some other bird sit on them.  So the duck meets a "kindly" fox planning to eat them as soon as she lays them.  It was at this point I skipped ahead because I was like what the hell? and I discovered that in an effort to protect the duck the collie sends inexperienced blood hound puppies who eat the fox and then promptly eat the eggs as well.  

For.  Reals.  

"Jemima Puddle-duck was escorted home in tears on account of those eggs.  She laid some more in June, and she was permitted to keep them herself: but only four of them hatched.  Jemima Puddle-duck said that it was because of her nerves; but she had always been a bad sitter."

I look up at G and I'm like, "This story sucks, it has a sad ending, do you want to read something else?"  She looks all solemn and says; "The eggs get eaten?"  I said "Yeah.  But she lays some more and is happy...and stuff."  So G says; "I'm getting a different book."  

So needless to say I was a little gun shy when searching for the Bunny book I remembered on the shelf.  I found it, and sure enough it was a Treasury of Peter Rabbit and other stories.  I opened it up and the spine cracked as though it had never been read.  The inscription was this:

Which leads me to the point of this post, (besides giving a heads up to baby loss mama's about the damn Jemima story.) I was a voracious reader as a child.  I read while walking home from school.  I read during recess and when I was supposed to be asleep, I constantly had my nose in a book, so WHY did I never read these three books?!  They were obviously mine, so available, my entire life, and yet I've never read any of them!  Plus they're all by Beatrix Potter!  They aren't a set, I got them at different times, just all written by her.   What is the deal with that?!

And the weirdest thing of all?  I have apparently been lugging around children's books I've never read for the last 16 years.  What the hell?  That's like 10 different times I've packed, moved and unpacked these books, placing them on the bookshelf, never occurring to me that I've never read them and therefore why bother having them.  

Bizarre in my opinion.  But G is devouring the Peter Rabbit book, through me of course, when she learns to read I'll never hear from her again, and we did like the Mrs Tiggy-winkle as well so I guess it's all working out in the end.  I'm just bewildered.  Also Jemima can suck it for all I care. 

*My quote; I totally forget where I got it from, I feel like it was from a cartoon, probably Roger from American Dad.  It makes me laugh every time I read it.