The book I remember most from my childhood is The Monster at the End of this Book, starring “Sesame Street”‘s Grover.

But there’s this other book I think about all of the time. It was small, square, and black and had a rudimentary drawing of a peacock on the cover. My mom was a master of character voices (the voice she used to anthropomorphize hers and my dad’s first dog, Gussy, was asked for by name by the whole family: “Do the Gussy voice! Do the Gussy voice!”), and I distinctly remember her reading with her famous gusto, “Green meanies roasting weenies. Meanies jump in yellow jello. They turn into yellow fellows.”

But for the longest time, I couldn’t find the book anywhere online. I would type “green meanies roasting weenies” into every search engine I could find, never with any result. Until one day. I was a college kid working at the Columbus Public Library at the time and happened to Google it during my break for whatever reason. And there it was:

Seals on Wheels by Dean Walley. It turns out the book was printed by Hallmark Children’s Editions for a very short time in 1970 and had long been out of print by the time I read it as a child in the 80s, so my parents must have inherited it from someone else. Newly armed with the title and author, my Internet search began anew, and I discovered a single copy for sale on eBay.

For three hundred dollars.

So now I not only wanted the book for my own memory-keeping, but I wanted to make it my nest egg in case of future tough times. My childhood bedroom had long since been cleaned out by my super-neat father, but I hoped to find it among the things he saved for me in the old wooden toy chest he had made for my younger self and went home one weekend to dig through it. But of course there was no book.

I’ve since had a Seals on Wheels eBay search saved and often get e-mails claiming that a copy is up for auction, but it always turns out to be some sort of seal for a truck tire. You can imagine my heartbreak.

But a real, legit copy turned up today for $50. And then I thought, “Hey, doesn’t Amazon sell used books, too?” So I checked, and it turns out they have two copies! And fifteen copies of the paperback version! FIFTEEN!! For six or seven years now, I’ve been feeling hopeless about this book and wondering if I should’ve just spent the $300 on it when I had the chance, and it turns out I could’ve had it for $30.

Now that it’s within reach, though, I’m scared. What if it’s not as good as I remember? What if it’s too painful to read now that my mom’s gone? Is it better to have my memories, or am I going to kick myself again if I don’t buy this thing?

Here’s the very insightful conversation Kamran and I had about the issue:

Not so helpful.

So the Selected Short Stories portion of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Selected Short Stories kind of sucks, huh? I guess an author isn’t obligated to write more than one inspiring work of early modernist feminism, but I was really taken aback by the difference between The Awakening and the rest of the book.

Of course, I didn’t get that Robert’s note there at the end meant he was never coming back until I read the Wikipedia article on the story, so maybe I shouldn’t judge.