It’s about a twenty or thirty minutes walk from our house to downtown Burlingame. Instead of going into the city tonight, I decided to walk over to Burlingame. I walked past the stores with expensive women’s clothing, past the Apple store, past Pottery Barn and Banana Republic, finding with unerring instinct the local independent bookstore.
I wandered down to the current events section, which was right next to the children’s section. Near me, a man was standing next to a boy who was about 8 years old.
“Dad, look at this book,” said the boy.
The man mumbled a reply. He was looking at something else.
“But Dad,” said the boy with more urgency in his voice, “look at this book.”
“What?” said the man.
“This book,” said the boy, showing it to his father. “It has Legos with the book.” His voice sounded slightly awestruck: a book with Legos!
“Cool,” said the father, with some enthusiasm, which he spoiled by immediately turning to call to his wife across the store, “Did you see the children’s section? They have a good children’s section here.”
I wandered over to the mystery books. There were two other children behind me looking at books. A man, presumably their father, walked over, and said, “OK, it’s time for the —— family to go now.” There was just the slightest hint of uncertainty in his voice.
The children ignored him.
“C’mon, guys, let’s please put the books back now,” said the tentative father.
The children ignored him.
“Don’t you guys want to get ice cream?” he said.
“Ice cream?” they cried.
“Yeah!” he said, putting their books back on the shelf for them.
I suddenly noticed that there was one other solo adult in the bookstore; everyone else appeared to be part of a family of adults and children. I went over to the science fiction books, which again was near the big children’s section. Yet another parent was standing in the children’s section talking to a child.
“Put the book back,” said the parent.
“WAAH!” screamed the child.
“OK, we’ll buy the book,” said the parent to stop the child from crying. This reminded me of when I visited a toy shop in a well-to-do white suburb for ten years, where someone I know was the manager. Behind the cash register, the staff had posted a sign that read, “Unattended children will be sold into slavery.”
Unusually for me, I didn’t buy anything at this bookstore.
Dan, you should do a review of kindles for us sometime. I seem more techno than me, and if you don’t use one, you can at least let us know why. I want to get something to read all the books I can download from google books now without having to print 300 pages. There is lots of interesting UU stuff out there too, that we should reread I think (We meaning UU’s who find what UU’s a 100 years ago were saying of interest and meaning).
But I need an easier way to get at their words.
-Bill
Welcome to my world – things have actually gotten worse since my toy shop days. There’s one parent who cajoles, yells, and begs his children for at least a full hour each time it’s time to leave the library: “Guys, come on. I really mean it this time…time to go…come on guys…”. Fifteen minutes later, they’re still there.
Oh the stories I could tell – but I like my job, so I won’t. :)
You should come to our bookstores in the Midwest, in the small towns where reading is a dying art. Bookstores are almost like going to church. A UU church, probably, but church all the same.
(PS and I think we seize all Kindles at the border)
Bill Baar @ 1 — My review of Kindle is simple: The display is ugly (so forget about good page design), Kindle doesn’t do page numbers (so indices are useless), and until recently Kindle wouldn’t display books that are in PDF form. Worse yet, Amazon’s license says that they can recall a book you have stored on your Kindle at any time, at their pleasure. I think Kindle sucks. If I were going to get an e-book reader, I’d get the Sony Reader — or actually, I’d wait until the display techonology is better and until readers incorporate tablet-PC technology so I can make notes in the margins.
Children’s librarian @ 2 — Yes, i want parents to be parents, and own their authority.
Jean @ 3 — Yeah, but you have a kick-butt used bookstore — better than the used bookstore in San Mateo, Calif., where I live.
Dan..thanks… much appreciated.