Mayonnaise Chicken and other eReader Adventures

The thing about saying you'll never do something is that eventually you will do that something you professed to never do, as long as it isn't something totally unsafe, crazy or illegal, generally speaking.

In my case it was saying I'd never, ever use an eReader.

Ever!

Books are meant for holding, not peering into on a screen.

You can't hold an eReader in the bathtub.

You can't turn it's pages.

You can't dog-ear it's corners when you don't have a bookmark handy.

My family got me an eReader for my birthday a few months ago.  So far, I've read 9 books on it (some of those while sitting and waiting at baseball practice), played about a thousand games of Words With Friends, used it to look up things on the Internet without actually setting one foot in my office and prepared recipes from my Pinterest account.

(And I wonder why I haven't been writing lately?)

Last night was the 5th meal I'd made with my Kindle propped on my kitchen counter, recipe beautifully displayed on it's gleaming screen.

And even if it was only a recipe using mayonnaise and frozen chicken breasts, it was somehow elevated, transformed even, into a culinary masterpiece just because I felt so darn clever putting my Kindle to good use in the kitchen.  I mean, how else is mayonnaise chicken going to be elevated?

PS - don't knock it til ya try it.  That recipe was delicious even though I thought I may be making a run to the local pizza joint later in the night like the time I made that casserole with crushed potato chips on top that ended up tasting like a melted plastic bag.

I highly advise against even considering making ANY recipe that calls for potato chips.

Potato chips are for eating.

Not cooking.

ANYWAY...

All in all, I've learned a few things since I've had the pleasure of being the owner of my very own eReader:  eBooks aren't all that bad, you can use an eReader in the bathtub if you want to (especially if you have the Netflix app and you're a fan of The Tudors - you can use it to watch JONATHAN RHYS MEYERS in the tub while you're shaving your legs!), you can use it as a flashlight, you can read in the dark with it (no need for a book light people), you can read at the baseball field and you can cook some tasty food without printing a recipe (wasting ink, wasting paper) and save the planet all at the same time!

But I wonder...

Will I even remember how to read a real book the next time I get my hands on one?  Will I relish in the smell of  newly printed pages, the scent of the fresh ink and the feel of the crisp sheets of paper that haven't been touched by another human being, ever?  If it's a used book, will I wonder about who has read it last, as I pick up a faint scent of something exotic left on it's pages?  Will I marvel at the unique way in which it's spine folds, like an accordion, showing how all previous readers have held it?

There are some things an eReader can't do, which isn't an entirely bad thing.  But I still get giddy when I can download a brand new book in the middle of the night, hair a mess, pyjamas on, kids sleeping upstairs and a finicky cat on my lap because oh!  the wonder of it all!

You can't do that with a paperback.