I'm constantly impressed at how many ways Chuck finds to relax. Watching television is one way. Playing computer games is another. So are newspapers. Chuck loves to relax by reading some of the hundreds of newspaper articles that he's clipped out during the past ten years. Also by doing The New York Times Crossword puzzles. But these, of course, are obvious. Anybody can relax by doing any of these. And no doubt lots of people do. But Chuck has come up with another way to relax. One that's not so obvious. That almost noone else would think of. I know I wouldn't. Something brand new. His own invention. Possibly even unique. Xeroxing.

Chuck really loves Xeroxing. He loves it more than anyone I know. He saves up stacks of papers and articles just so that he can go out and Xerox them. I wonder how anyone can find so many papers to Xerox. I wonder where he gets them. Until I remember all the newspaper articles he's clipped out during the past ten years. There must be hundreds of them. Each one waiting to be Xeroxed.

"Do you have anything you want to be Xeroxed?" Chuck will ask me as he's getting ready to go out and Xerox. I always try to have some small thing or other ready. That way we can turn Xeroxing into a family activity. Which makes Chuck really happy. I can tell by the way his face lights up as we take our armloads of papers and go out to do our Xeroxing.

We used to go to Kinko's all the time. But Kinko's got too crowded. All these pesky students from NYU were using the machines to do their homework. And getting in the way. Not one of them understood that Chuck had come there to relax. Not one of them had a clue.

So we had to find another place to go. Fortunately, there's another place just around the corner from Kinko's. A place called The Village Copier. The Village Copier isn't nearly as popular as Kinko's. And never crowded. Probably because it's so small and dumpy. None of those pesky NYU students likes to hang out at anyplace as small and dumpy as The Village Copier. But that doesn't bother us. In fact, we like it. We never have to wait. We get a copy machine immediately. Just because it's small and dumpy.. So we go there all the time now.

And Chuck has become really good at Xeroxing, too. Which shouldn't be at all surprising, considering the vast amount of Xeroxing he does. And I must add that there isn't anything that Chuck can't do on a Xerox machine.

He can Xerox any page either horizontally or vertically, whichever way you want it. He can switch the paper from letter size to legal size. And back again. He can enlarge anything to any size the machine permits. Or, if you'd rather, he can reduce it. He can get almost anything to fit on a single piece of paper, just by knowing how small to reduce it. Sometimes the words are so small that they can barely be read. But that doesn't matter. The important thing is that everything gets to fit on a single piece of paper. Which is very hard to accomplish. I know, because I can never do it.

And if I have a drawing or something else I want to reproduce, Chuck can do anything I ask. It can become horizontal or vertical, bigger or smaller, and lighter or darker, too. And - it will always be properly centered.

So we have a good time when we get the stacks of papers ready and go out together to relax at The Village Copier. Sometimes Chuck gets a little carried away, it's true. If this happens, I may become a trifle impatient over all that relaxing at the Xeroxing machine. But mostly this doesn't happen very often.

Because, of course, Xeroxing isn't the only way Chuck has to relax. But it's his own invention. It even seems to me that it's possibly unique.

September, 1997
BB