Marley and me

So after months and months of steeling myself, I think I'm finally ready to read 'Marley & Me'. Can't be so hard to find a book that became an overnight success, right? Wrong.

Went to the bookstore. Looked for it on the Best Sellers shelf. Not there. Looked at New Titles. Not there. Looked at Most Popular. Also not there. Not in Non Fiction either. Nor in Biographies. So looked for the Pet Section. How else could you classify a book about a guy and his dog?Then could not find the Pet Section. It's not where it usually is. How could a whole section disappear? I so hate it when stores rearrange entire sections, it throws you out of kilter. So finally, had to queue up at Information.

The book was in the Pet Section after all. Only they've shifted the Pet Section way to the back, in a corner that can be reached only through an alley of shelves. Like where they keep the adult videos. If you could buy adult videos here. But you know what I mean.

All the shelves in the store are numbered and the clerk at Information kindly scribbled on a scrap of paper the shelf number where the book was. Only when I located the shelf, it was full of breed-specific dog books. Which weren't listed alphabetically by order. So I looked for the Labrador books. Marley was a Lab, that much I knew. Was trying to take some initiative there. Actually, I wasn't going all that way to the bookstore only to be thwarted by not being able to find the book I wanted. Wasn't there.

OK, so maybe I was given the wrong shelf number. But at least I knew I was in the right section. I looked on the surrounding shelves, with the general dog books. Wasn't next to James Herriot (Dog Fiction). Wasn't next to Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (Dog Non Fiction). Finally saw it next to Dog Whisperer Cesar Milan (Dog Training). I don't know how a book subtitled 'Life and love with the world's worst dog' ended up with the dog training titles. Or maybe that was precisely why it got shelved there. It was the only copy on the shelf and it had a 20% discount label -- the type they stick on the bin ends to finish the stock. Oh wait, bin ends are for wines. Remainders, that's it. (see, it does pay to read Dave Barry, you know what Rock-bottom Remainders are)

Went to Starbucks, got a coffee, sat down and read. OK, everybody knows that the dog dies. It would be like 'My Dog Skip' -- which had me crying so bad, I was actually afraid to watch the movie when it came out. I figured that as long as I didn't read the last chapter in public, I wouldn't be a basket case among strangers.

I didn't even get to the first chapter. I was already in tears at the preface. Where John Grogan's mother tells him that she's only ever seen his father cry twice -- when they lost his stillborn sister and when the dog of his childhood died. It was exactly like how my mother told me that she saw Dad bursting into tears for the first time after Spock died.

I had to close the book in a hurry and switch to the new Terry Prachett that I had also bought. As it was, I went into work with red eyes. I think I can only continue with Marley when I'm cocooned at home. And with HRH on my lap as some sort of guardian.

All of you who told me to read it -- why didn't you warn me about the preface?