Fa la la la la, la la la la…

We’ll get to that in a second.

First…I was reading an article about Amazon’s new e-book reader, which sounds like quite a neat piece of technology. If only it wasn’t expensive as all get-out.

In the article, they cited a 2004 NEA study that said 57 percent of adults in the United States read one book a year. At the time, I thought, “Holy cow, what is wrong with this country?!” I thought it was a number that pointed to a sad state of intellectual use.

But as a few days passed, I started to rethink my initial reaction. Now I’m thinking that number sounds surprisingly high. Think how many people you know who never say anything about books or even reading for that matter. How many others say they’d love to read if they only had some time. It seems like the number of people who make it through one book a year should be more like 20 percent. What do you think? Either way, maybe we should be writing books about Britney Spears and celebrity pregnancies. At least people would be reading.

And in another sad state of affairs, a story I believe out of Ohio. A contractor is remodeling a woman’s bathroom when he breaks open a wall to find a stash of old cash. The money was wrapped in newspaper dating back to 1939. The face value was $182,000, but appraisers say it could be worth half a million dollars.

The homeowner offered the contractor 10 percent of the money. Not a bad chunk of change, especially when you consider he was there to remodel a bathroom. He says that’s ridiculous. He suing, saying the money should be his under a “Finder’s Keepers” law that dates back to English common law.

You’re serious? If I went to work tomorrow and stumbled upon something worth $500,000 and my employer offered me $50 grand, I would think that was ridiculously high. What did I do other than stumbling upon it blindly?

The money in this case was probably stashed by the original homeowner, who built the house in 1922 and lived there for 47 years. The money was his, and adjusted for today’s value that’s like him putting $2.2 million inside the wall. Maybe we take a few moments and see if he has some family who actually deserves the money? Maybe we say hey, this money isn’t ours, can we put it to a good, charitable use?

No. MINE MINE MINE.

Bah humbug.

I don’t know their names. Well, I think the guy’s name is David, though I don’t know his wife’s name or their last name. Actually, I’m not entirely certain they’re married either, but I think I remember hearing the word “divorce.” at some point.

I do know they’re gone.

When I moved in here almost two months ago, I’m not sure what I expected. The last apartment complex I lived in was in Maryland, where everyone was a graduate student at UMD. We had nicknames for some of the people who lived around us, and I know I had several head nod or “hey how’s it going” relationships in our building, but it’s not like we were best friends with any of our neighbors.

I saw David walking towards me on the sidewalk a few days after I came here. The way the apartments are set up, it’s pretty obvious that I would only be walking that way if i lived next door to him. I tried to make early eye contact, and followed it up with a greeting when we got close.

I probably could have started singing “Loveshack” and busted out a dance routine and he still would have walked by like I wasn’t there. Didn’t make eye contact. Didn’t say a word.

Ok. No problem. I tried again a few days later, same non-response. I pass the woman, again no response.

I start to write them off as not people I need to worry about. And then I get a little insight into their lives, and my feelings shift a bit.

There’s a shouting match. I’m not sure what started it, but I know it ended with a door slamming and the woman shouting “Get out of my apartment, I want a divorce.” A minute later, a tire screech goes with the rev of an engine as David drives away.

Everyone has their problems, and sometimes they boil over. You can’t solve every problem with honey. But then it happened again, and again, and again. A few times a week you could hear it build, then follow the predictable pattern. He yells. She yells. the dog barks. The door slams. The dog barks. She yells. He yells. Tires screech. She cries.

At first I felt bad for them. Here was a relationship that I assume at one point was nothing but love. But somewhere, maybe slowly but maybe in a way too fast for either of them to deal with, the dynamic changed. Maybe they were working through a major issue–talking about a child, money trouble, too much time playing Halo.

Whatever the problem, it was clearly that–a problem. There comes a time when you need to take a step back and re-evaluate what is going on. Were they addressing the real problem in these “discussions,” or just worrying about the fringe issues that allowed them to get our their frustrations without getting to the core?

You get to a point where it’s such an unhealthy situation, you need to be able to take seemingly drastic steps to return to reality. At what point do you just say enough is enough and get yourself out of a bad place? Again, I never talked to these people and have no clue what their deal was. But from my ringside seat, what is clear is that something needed to happen.

Earlier this week I went to work at 3 a.m. When I got back just before 1 p.m., they were gone. Everything.

I’ll never know what happened to David and the woman, but I hope they can take a step back, look at what really matters, and go in a direction of happiness. “When you figure out love is all that matters after all, it sure makes everything else seem so small.” Surely the first country star quote in my writing career, and quite possibly the last. Enjoy it.