Remember the gum, candy, and trinket vending machines at the exit in many stores? For a coin, you could turn a knob, open a metal flap, and receive something. The gum and candy came out unwrapped but trinkets were in tiny plastic containers.
Once, as an adult, something in the trinket machine caught my eye. I put my quarter in, turned the knob, but didn't get what I had my eye on. What I did get was even better - a tiny--and I do mean microscopically tiny-- note book and pencil. Honestly, that notebook wasn't much bigger than my thumbnail and the pencil was the size of half of a toothpick. On the cover was a picture of a guy with a big magnifying glass and the words SPY BOOK.
I laughed until I cried, and immediately wrote something like, "She did it again," on the first page that almost required a magnifying glass to read. I filled (not hard) a few more pages with benign and coded notes.
Because I was always a clown, I took my Spy Book to work - before I was an actual spy (QA coordinator with cameras to catch anyone snooping around my office) - and put it in the pencil holder section of my desk drawer. My goal was only to have a reason to smile when I opened my drawer.
One day, a paranoid, sketchy co-worker opened my drawer to steal a pen because walking to the supply cabinet was too much trouble. She totally freaked out about my spy book and called a conference with other co-workers in the file room.
I regret losing my spy book. But look what my granddaughter got yesterday. I am trying not to covet the kid's toy.
