A Close Encounter of the Burroughs Kind

Sorry to admit it, but I'm pretty shy about starting up conversations with people I don't know. But when I spotted Franz Kafka's The Castle in the basket of the old guy (heh heh...as if I'm not) in Half-Price Books this morning, I couldn't stop myself from asking, "Are you a Franz Kafka fan?" He seemed a little baffled by the question initially, but then said not so much that, but he was a book collector. And we chatted about that for a moment, and then I pointed out that there was a 1920 copy of Thuvia, Maid of Mars for a couple of bucks (somebody had bought the Pirates of Venus) *  if he was interested in that, and he said he wasn't because he already had all of Edgar Rice Burroughs's books (including all of the Tarzan books in hardcovers)...and had read all of them, too. My brother! It was a nice little moment, for sure. We chatted a bit longer, but I didn't want to wear out my welcome, so I left him to it and am hoping I'll run into him again sometime. These little moments of unexpected pleasure in making contact with another person--such is the stuff lives are made on. It's the antidote to measuring out  your life with coffee spoons.