There was always a chorus
of adolescent groans
whenever you said,
“Let me read ya’ something.”
Okay, maybe not
the first time you said it,
but every time,
the hundreds of times,
you repeated it
through the years.
It was usually
at the height
of a disagreement
of perspectives
on politics
or history
or doctrine
or social issues,
when you would raise
your voice
ever so slightly
and say,
as you reached for a tome
from the bookcase,
“Let me read ya’ something.”
Like this would settle the matter,
because your reasoning
was based on your reading,
and the authority
of published authors
had to be respected,
and would be harder to dispute
than the reasoning of our father.
The groans said it all;
we wouldn’t concede
just because
someone
sometime
somewhere
had written
something
you construed to support
your reasoning.
After all,
we were adolescents;
we knew everything;
we didn’t respect authority
like you did.
But, that didn’t stop you;
it seemed
like you had read
something
about
everything
we discussed,
so,
there was always
an occasion
to say,
“Let me read ya’ something.”
