The Dragon Slayer

People love to talk about what makes them happy. Even the shyest of people will talk your ear off if you ask the right questions.

I met the Dragon Slayer on a drizzly Saturday morning at an old, musty-smelling used bookstore near my house.

"I'm looking for Walden by Thoreau," I asked him. "Do you have it?"

He looked in his database and quietly said, "Nope, we don't have it here." I could tell he was uncomfortable.

"Hmm. Well, do you have any recommendations for me? What do you like to read?"

He perked up. It was like seeing a glimmer of light through a door-jam. "I like to read fantasy and science fiction."

I smiled. "You know, I've always wondered why people like science fiction and fantasy books. I've never read them." (To be honest, I'd always thought sci-fi and fantasy were kind of dorky--too many wizards and goblins and trolls and what not.) "Why do you like them?"

And with that question, the floodgates opened.

"I think that fantasy books just flow better," he explained. "The problem with non-fiction is author has to be so accurate and precise, that the story sometimes gets lost in all the facts. The author has to study so hard to make everything factual, that he sacrifices the flow of the story. Science fiction authors make everything up, so the story just flows from their minds to the page. Personally, I like books that flow, with a strong story-line. Let me recommend some to you!"

He recommended Isaac Asimov, then he described to me one of his favorites--a fantasy book called Dealing with Dragons.

"It's about a princess who has five other princess sisters...except, she's not a normal princess. When the other princesses are learning table manners and etiquette, she wants to learn to cook and fence," he excitedly describes in between phone-call interruptions. "But her father puts a stop to that. So she meets a talking frog--but he's not a prince in disguise, he's just a talking frog, you know?--who tells her to run away, and she does and becomes a maid for dragons. All the knights in shining armor want to slay the dragon and save her, but when they get there, she turns them away, because she actually likes living with the dragons!" He laughs and hopes I see the irony. I do.

"So, in this book," he continues, "the two things that have magic are wizards and dragons. The wizards have magic through their staffs."

He picks up a nearby broom and holds it up to give me a visual.

"And the dragons make magic internally." He smiles.

I have to ask, "So, when did you start reading fantasy books?"

"Well, most children's books are fantasy books," he explains, "so it just was a natural transition for me." He starts to chuckle. "In fact, my parents used to bribe me with money to read, because I never wanted to. But then I got hooked, and I would stay up late and read and read and read!"

The Dragon Slayer taught me something I had never realized before. Sometimes, we tend to get so hung up on facts and figures, that we neglect the inherent beauty in a creative work of art. It seems that, in our society, to know more is of higher value than to dream more. But they are of equal importance. Knowing scientific facts helped the Wright brothers build their airplane, but it was creative passion that gave them the dream in the first place. Was Benjamin Franklin, the famous lightning tamer, any less of a wizard than Gandalf? How is flying in a plane any different from flying on a broomstick? For one second, let's stop looking at our great technological advances as parts and pieces, and start looking at them for what they really are: magic.

All of the sudden, wizards and knight and dragons and magic don't seem so far fetched now, do they?