Goodwill had their irregularly scheduled 50% off of everything sale yesterday, which we never miss. Normally, though, we’re big on the Berry Road location, but we were just there last weekend and had some concerns that there wouldn’t have been enough new stuff. So like the intrepid adventurers we are, we set out for the Madison location to see how things shook out there.
It was packed, of course — it always is for these sales. And weird things happened — they always do while thrift shopping. But I had one especially weird encounter which I will recount for you here.
While I was perusing the book section (and having unusually good luck finding interesting stuff), a scraggly hippie dude came back there and started looking, too. He saw the stack of books on my cart, noticed one on organic gardening and said in a disappointed, nay, almost irritated tone, “Oh, I see you’re looking for the same books I am. You like organic gardening?” I felt like saying something like, “No, I was here first; you’re looking for the same books I am” but that would have been petty and also stupid, for clearly we could not have been looking for exactly the same sets of books on exactly the same topics. Our shopping may have been an intersecting Venn diagram but it was unlikely to be a complete union of both sets. (Whoa. How geeky was that?) For example, I was finding interesting titles on product design and development, marketing, and so on. Yes, perhaps we both like organic gardening, but how likely is it that our similarities go deeper than that? I’m putting my money on “not very likely,” but we’ll never know.
Anyway, I smiled half-heartedly back at him — I don’t like to encourage chit-chat while I’m doing serious shopping anyway, even if I’d gotten a good vibe from him, and went back to looking. Well, Dude was not to be discouraged. He actually leaned over in front of me to read the spines of the books I was looking at. So I made an exasperated sound (hey, I know I sound like a bitch here, but this is thrift shopping, people — there have to be rules!) and moved away to a different shelf. I gathered up a few titles and as soon as I placed them on the stack on my cart, Dude got a panicky look and made a beeline for the section where I’d just been. I kid you not. This continued for several more iterations before I had made a cursory review of all the shelves and just gave up. At the end, I may have been just picking up books he might be interested in, just to piss him off; I really couldn’t say for sure.
On the off-chance that Scraggly Dude is a reader of this blog, here’s a message: get a grip. They’re just books.
Oh… and I got yer organic gardening book right here, asshole. 🙂
And here is a t-shirt for the Wordy One who likes Venn Diagrams. 🙂
Ooooh. I like!
You’re right. Thrift shopping is Very. Serious. Business. I hate when people are bugging me when I’m shopping!
First hand on the thrifty item lays first claim to purchase and everyone else backs off.
It can get tricky and a bit touchy, but them’s the rules.
The early worm gets the book and the late scraggly dude is left whining.
What you need is a bodyguard to keep back the adoring fans and freaks.
That’s true, huh? Sigh. If only I knew some really tall, hulking male who was secretly really sweet but looked really intimidating. And it would be great if he knew some kind of martial art or something in case he needed it. And even better if he had, like, weird hair or something to add to the fear factor. But sadly, nothing like that exists.
You’d think such things would be in high demand, and yet nobody makes them. It’s an odd odd world we live in.