Random Shop Talk

Day 361 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and rapidly counting down,* and what someone is reading will be revealed in the following random bookshop conversation.

*The votes are coming in, by way of your comments!  If you haven't yet commented on what you'd like to see happen next in this blog, or what you'd like to see more of, better do it in the next five days!!  (Or I'll just do whatever I want!)

So, a young man and a young woman came into the shop yesterday, one delighted by Babette the cat, one less so, and spent a lot of quality time together looking at the shelves.

Oh, and I should pause to mention that a couple of young women came in, too, likewise having a good time, both delighted by Babette, and prompting from me the question, "Did the cat see your hat?"

"I don't know," said the young woman wearing the hat.

"There's so much to love about it," I said.  "Dangling things, ears."

This was a spectacular hat. White faux fur, pink ears, a pink bow or rosette, long white furry dangling ties. I don't know what kind of animal it was. A fantasy animal, perhaps. (But they have something similar at Hot Topic, via Amazon, here, that purports to be a rabbit.)

Back to the other young couple, and an inexplicable shift to present tense. The young man comes to the register with two books, one a contemporary paperback I've forgotten, and one a small, dark hardcover. Behind him is the young woman. Both are friendly.

"Ah," I say, opening the hardcover to find the price, and the little yellow post-it, showing it was shelved in our Etiquette section. "What a Young Wife Ought to Know!" I pull off the post-it, with our stock number on it, so we can mark it sold later in the database, and look up, a twinkle in my eye, first at the young man and next at the young woman, to say, "We also have What a Young Husband Ought to Know!"

I know this because that's my job--I just described it in our online catalogue and carried it to what I like to call, sometimes fondly, and sometimes with a toe-stubbing lack of fondness, "the chaos of the back room."

In the split second it takes my eyes to twinkle at the young woman, I am also imagining a foray into the chaos of the back room--"Danger!  Danger, Will Robinson!"--and fearing my own and the young couple's possible disappointment if I never returned....

Not to fear! And a twinkle in the eye is often contagious. "We also found," says the young woman, "What a Middle-Aged Woman Ought to Know."

And, speaking of danger, a former co-worker came into the store yesterday, too, to give us a jazz book and look around a bit, while illegally parked on the snow-heaped street, and I learned that his middle name, a family name, is Danger.  Oh, my!  He is a man who can actually say, "Danger is my middle name."