The Pet Goat

You're probably not familiar with the children's book Reading Mastery: Level 2, Storybook 1 by Engelmann and Bruner. But you've almost certainly heard about one of the stories in it: "The Pet Goat."

Here's what one of the reviewers at amazon.com had to say about the book:

Riveting, this book had me rivited to my chair!

I really like this book a lot. Once I was reading this book with some short friends of mine. (These friends are people, and they're not as tall as me.) I'm sorry to say, though, my friend Andy came into the room while I was reading this VERY VERY GOOD book and he interrupted me, which was really sort of rude of him. (I said very very good like that because that will impress my friend Laura -- who is a girl and also my wife, because I got married to her like I did because I am not gay and neither is she, and the constitution says I can marry a girl -- because she is a librarian, which means, mostly, that she really really likes books a LOT, even more than me, I mean.)

Well, after my friend Andy came in and interrupted me, I still kept reading this book because one, I know when I have a good book in my hands (and this is a stupendous book, something pretty good, I mean) and then there's the second reason I kept reading -- I did not want to alarm my short friends (they were children, meaning that they aren't adult people yet, they're pre-adults, I like to say) by putting the book down and going to play a video game or whatever it was Andy wanted me to do. Then I saw my friend Condi in the doorway (Condi is also a girl, but not my wife) and she waved at me, and I thought, Condi looks good in blue. She looks very, you know, patriotic.

But then finally I had to go, and I never got back to the book, but after I retire from my job, or when I go on vacation in a couple days (it's always only a couple days away until I go on vacation, sort of), well then I will finally sit down and read this book from START to FINISH. (To be honest, I don't always, always read things from start to finish. Condi will tell you about that.)