I had occasion today to lend my Kindle to a 60-something year old U.S. Marshall.  This went about as well as you’d imagine.

When juries are deliberating, the jury room is “guarded” by a U.S. Marshall.  This is not so much to protect the jury from any nefarious characters as it is to guard their cell phones (which they’re not allowed to take into the jury room with them) and to say “all rise!” when the jury comes back into court.

Anyway, there was a jury out in a courtroom nearby where I was working today, and as I walked into the building, I heard one U.S. Marshall say to another that he’d been suddenly assigned to guard the jury room and hadn’t brought a newspaper.  Thinking I could do my good deed for the day, I pulled my kindle out of my bag (I use it for commuting) and said “here, you can borrow this.  I’ve got a bunch of mysteries loaded on there.”

“Thanks!” he said.  “What is it?”

“It’s a Kindle,” I said.  “It’s like an electronic book reader.  The books are already all loaded on there.”

“Do you have ‘When Bad Things Happen to Good People?’” he asked?

“Ah….no.  Sorry.  But I have ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’  That’s a pretty good one.”

“Okay, I’ll try the one you like.  How does it work?”

“Well, I’ll call up the book…here it is.  Now you just start reading, and press ‘next page’ to turn the page.”

“I’m going to have to get my glasses,” he said, a little uncertainly.

“It’s really easy, I promise,” I said, and I continued upstairs to the office, leaving my precious kindle in the hands of the grandfatherly-looking Marshall.  I mentally patted myself on the back for introducing someone new to this fabulous new technology, and for selflessly lending out my fancy device.  What a kind and lovely person I am!

Twenty minutes later, there was a knock on the office door.

“Hi, pseudo,” the Marshall said.  “I’m going to give this back to you.  I…I think I’ll just do a crossword or something.”

“Were you having trouble with it?” I said.  “I can answer any questions you have.”

“No,” he said. “It’s…it’s just not my kind of thing.”

Oh. Okay.  I took the kindle back, the thanked me, and went on his way.  I felt a little bad, foisting technology upon him like that, when it clearly made him uncomfortable.  Fancy gadgets aren’t for everyone, I told myself, and maybe some old dogs don’t want to learn new tricks.

Curious to see how far he’d gotten, I turned it on and looked at the page where he left off.  There, clear as day, was a description of Lisbeth Sander’s investigation of a man who paid for sex with adolescents in Estonia.

Ah.  Right.  Perhaps it was the incredible amounts of casual sex and violence and not the “next page” button that did it.  Duly noted.