Monday, July 19, 2010

You Don't Want to See Me When I'm Angry

Yesterday, we went to the only second hand bookstore in town. It is the only place in town that sells the paperback series my 13 yo is reading. He begged me for 3 days to go to the shop, and it is too hot out to ride his bike. We went on a quiet Sunday afternoon. I made the mistake of bringing my rambucious 5 yo.

Yes, he is high energy. Yes, he can be loud. Now, really I thought we were going to a book store not a library. I led him to the miniscule kids' section to look at kids books. However, he was not interested in used Elmo or chewed-on alphabet books. He took me on a tour of the "Historical Romance" section, which is like a mini maze. He was a little loud and I shushed him a couple of times. I stopped to see if I could find an author whose books had been adapted to movies I've enjoyed. After about 2 minutes looking at the alphabetically arranged shelves, I could not find her. I heard my 5 yo being lound again. I turned the corner to see him oohing and aahing into the floor fan, and laughing. I've enjoyed that myself, in the past. The sour look on the clerk's (maybe owner, not sure) face, made me shush him again. I picked up a book in the "new" books section that I was interested in and browsed the inside of the cover. Then my son talked into the fan again and I asked him to stop. He trotted over to my 13 yo and talked rather loudly exclaiming over the pictures on the covers in the comic book section. Then the clerk said, shaking his head, "He's gotta go. He's gotta go." While boiling inside, I put the $13 book, that he apparently didn't care to sell to me, back on the shelf, took my son by the hand, and walked out. I started the car because it was 98 degrees out and I wanted to start the AC. I didn't want to disappoint my teenager, so I walked back in, with the car running, and handed him some money. I looked straight into the clerk's face and said, "We won't be back," and walked out.


Really? My 5 yo was what? Disturbing the one other customer in that tiny shop? To offend the homeschooling mother of 5 kids is not a very smart business practice when you're a book store constantly on the brink of bankrupcy is it? For heaven's sake, we were in his precious shop for less than 5 minutes. Apparently, he doesn't actually need business.

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