Heres one for you. Went to get it last night after the model club meeting. 8 of us walked over to the B&N to get our copies and to our horror....they weren't there. Now being the inquisitive primate that I am, I went and asked the facial pierced, coffee sucking, clove cigarette reeking, goth wannabee that worked there if there were any in the back that had somehow been overlooked and had not gone to their expectant fathers. She answered sure, but there was no one there that night that could inventory them and put them out for us. But we will take 10 copies, right now says I (we were picking up 2 extra for friends), she answers back with eyes rolled up in her head and a sigh that drew out like some desert wind, carrying with it the odor of the deposit of a mameluke camel charge....but I digress. and said in her best CA valley accent... I said.....we have a whole stack but I can't sell them to you because the girl that puts the magazines out isn't here.
I was dumbfounded, nay, broken at this. What could we do? behind this cypher locked door, in a stock room, packaged neatly between Britney Spears and Trophy Bass were our precious tomes. Oh the humanity. We could only meander back and like dogs outside the butcher shop waiting for the dog world reality of that perceived moment that a sausage would scramble for freedom behind some exiting patron, only to end up in our hungry maws, we could only wait. Hoping that one of these precious manuscripts would feel the need to escape behind a absent minded stock clerk and we would have our prize. Solomons gold! The Holy Grail! That which we had ventured across traffic for. The issue of great Scale. But it was not to pass. I asked to see a manager. Elvyra, mistrss of the dark, only narrowed her eyes at me with that look that cats give dogs when they have eaten a fresh tootsie roll out of the litter box. Not here she hissed.
I was lost. Me and my company would have to go without. 8 souls defeated by and broken by this harpee of bad fashion and teenage angst. We talked of phone calls, boycotts, commando raids, heavy artillery. Possibly even calling Tom Ridge and saying we had found Osama in a stock room at a book store. That would teach vampirilla and open the door to the back room. In the confusion of flash bangs, air stikes, CNN filming Navy Seals handcuffing and strip searching miss harpee, we could liberate our copies. But what if they were damaged? Burned? Taken as evidence in the hunt for WMD (weirdos of magazine deterence). We wouldn't risk it. .....The hour drive home seemed like an eternity. Why did we leave while our comrades were still prisoners? Bring them home or send us back I thought....nah, already taken I ashamedly realized.
I would have to wait. I suddenly had an urge to watch John Carpenters Vampires, or Buffy. I hate goth. I hate cats.
Today the sun shown, birds chirped and I went to Books -a Million. Got my copy. Hats off to the entrepeneurial spirit and to the sales people that understand that sales, mean just that.
Paid my $7.00 and was amazed as always.
Mike