This book is a vessel for the actual item that has traveled through time and space to get to you here.

This story starts a few years ago when some friends and I were in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and were walking down the street, and I see this guy in a long black coat, and…this amazing looking woman walking next to him. And, I sort of point, and say “Is that Neil Gaiman?” My friends just keep walking, and happily he stopped, and the…woman…mouths to me and says “Yesss.”

…He is an utter and complete gentleman… and asks “What’s your favorite book of mine?” So I stammer out “The, the the graveyard book.” I’m very awkward, and kind of stuttering in this conversation…and he says…“Thanks for your interest in my book.” And his wife…out of nowhere…pulls a flower out, and she puts it in my hair. And then they just leave, they’re gone.

A few weeks later I was at a book signing of his…and I go up to him and say “I have to know, where did that flower come from?”…He says, “…We were at a movie screening, and someone put it in my hair, and my wife was like ‘it doesn’t look good in your hair,’ so…she took it…”

His wife had kept the flower until they met us…and…gave me the flower, just –I don’t know why. So I went home and I was reading this…Kurt Vonnegut book, “Look At The Birdie,” and I immediately put it in this book and…pressed it. It’s been about 3 years and I haven’t opened it since. Let’s see…oh -(opens to reveal flower, intact!)

So that’s my magic flower, I occasionally just pick up this book and hold it when I need magic powers.

This belongs in the Museum of Items That Look Better on me than Neil Gaiman

Exhibited by Scott Priz

Transcript edited by Eric Bartholomew