I bought a book on Audible. One I really like. It's called "I'd Rather Laugh" by Linda Richman. I've read this book many times. It's my feel good "bible". I first read it many years ago when Ray Williams died suddenly. I was engaged to marry him. He was 37, I was 44. We were 7 years apart but oddly enough I was "younger" than him in many ways. I struggled to understand death. I read all the books I could find on how to cope with the desperate feeling I was having. Nothing made sense anymore. After 18 years of marriage to someone who treated me like I was invisible this wonderful man comes into my life and six months later he's gone. Gone. How does that even happen?
Well Linda's book really helped me deal with loss. She lost her 29 year old son to a car accident. She goes into detail about how she dealt with his death. Some of it was gut wrenching and some of it was hilarious. We all deal with death in different ways but I fell in love with her. She's flawed. So am I. She makes no apologies for her flaws and neither do I. I think she and I would be BFFs in another life and I like having cosmic best friends. The ones that you never actually meet but know you'd connect to if you ever hung out together?
Well Audible did Linda dirty. The book she read was not the one I read many years ago. A lot of it was different. Most people wouldn't notice those little details but I did. Some of the funniest stories were missing and I knew it. Last night when I was listening to it I was thinking, "Heyyyyyy wait just a minute here, where's the story about Sammy?????, and the celebrity party she went to at her daughter's house????, those were hilarious and parts I loved. Gone. Not in the book she read. I felt jipped. Cheated. Hosed. PISSED. Why would they do that? Cut the audible down to four hours maybe? Well I wanted the details. All of them. Every story she told meant something to me. Every one of them was like a little life preserver to me. They were friends of mine and they weren't invited to the party!!
It's not a big deal to most people but it was a huge deal to me. I got out her actual book and looked at it and sure enough it was as bold as could be. Missing the good stuff. Well maybe the "little things" don't mean a whole lot to Audible but they do to me. I'm going to get her book out and make time to sit with my feet up and a cup of something yummy and read it the old fashioned way. Short cuts are short for a reason. They leave stuff out on purpose. I like all the STUFF I can get especially in the healing venue. I learned my lesson through. No more Audible books for me. I'm cancelling my subscription because they don't give the entire serving of help and that's not acceptable to me.
Miss Linda is a cherished friend and her words mean the world to me ALL OF THEM. No short cuts! The world deserves the stories as she wrote them. Isn't that just like the world though? To think they can take those kinds of liberties with our stuff? Oh no one will care. It's not that big a deal. Until it is. I love the little things. A whole bunch of them make up the best things in life. That's what I think anyway. I didn't like the feeling at all. I didn't like that Audible chose what mattered most to me and what didn't. That book was perfection exactly as it was. That's what I wanted, the whole enchilada. It was as if someone took a bite out of my enchilada and they served it to me. I don't think so!!
Well there you have it. All I can figure is there are other editions and versions of the book. Maybe I had one of the first printings of it. I feel bad for the people who didn't get it all and a little special that I did. The little things. Optional to some people. Not on my watch.
No comments:
Post a Comment