Courtia,

I've been doing this gifting thing for awhile now, and I've been shafted before. No big deal, it's about the giving. But this was the Book Exchange, my favorite of all, and I was Professionally Shafted.

On the shipping deadline I was sent an anonymous email explaining why my gift would be late, I knew then I'd been shafted because Amazon can find my address just fine. A week later I was given an imaginary tracking code just to put salt in the wounds. Never thought I'd be rematched and I was, to put it nicely "depressed" because books are dear to me. They helped shape my life and probably saved it back in the dark days of my youth. Allow me to explain. Better yet, let me summarize.

I was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles during the '70s. I was raised without a father, the eighth out of nine children. We were on welfare and life as they say it was cheap.

On a shitty street in Compton, California there still stands the tenement row where I spent my youth among the Crips and Bloods, unable to safely wear blue or red even though I was just a kid. People around me died or just disappeared all the time. My friends were all getting into gangs, and doing drugs and smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol I WAS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL FOR CHRISSAKES and I needed a way out. A way to escape the guns and knives and fists and syringes that blackened the edges of my vision, and dimmed the hopes for my future.

Then one day when I was in fourth grade the Bookmobile came by my street and I picked up "A Wrinkle In Time", "Flatland" and this really fat book I never thought I'd read called "The Fellowship of the Ring".

I never looked back. After school, on weekends, on holidays I would grab my bike, a lunch, some books and ride off to Signal Hill so I could be alone with just my adventures. The cricket pumps pumping away all around me were the soundtrack of my formulative years. I would bring a shopping cart to the Bookmobile when it came. I never returned a book unread.

Forty years later and instead of winding up in prison, insane or dead I have a tremendous vocabulary and understanding of the worlds around me. I now teach the building trades to incarcerated youth. My life makes a difference in the lives of others and I don't know if that would be the case now if not for books.

So now books, they are more than just the sum of their parts to me. They freed me, helped shape me into the man I am today.

Because of all these things I felt robbed when I knew I was shafted. Imagine my surprise when I received your anonymous message. I'm not too big to say I cried.

Then came the box with the air holes and there was no crying on that day, only the purest of joys. I swear I felt like I was in fourth grade again, only in a much safer place. You did this.

Now, once I take care of these pesky zombies and line my office with the zombie caution tape (I'll send you a picture, just you) I will partake on the most epic of journeys. The Wheel Of Time doesn't scare me. I'm not afraid of a 15,000 page epic. I'm afraid of there not being a 15,000 page epic to read. You've started me on my way and I promise you, I will finish.

I want to say "thank you" but any words that come to mind seem like lame platitudes compared to how I feel about what you've done for me.

How about, I will never forget you, I will never stop reading and I will never stop trying to make the world a better place.

I love you.