GROWING UP IN A BOOKSTORE

The children who visit our store are our favorite customers. We have seen many of them grow up right before our eyes. They go from running in the front door, around the cases that hold new releases, around the counter and straight to the toy box in the children’s section, to walking in cool and calm and strolling toward Harry Potter and The Hunger Games.

We engage and flirt and entice and tease the little ones every chance we get. Usually we can get the shy ones to at least smile, the talkative ones to tell us stories and the readers to admit that bookstores are one of their favorite things. Nice.

I had a particularly entertaining encounter with a little, probably about five year old, girl the other day.

We have a bowl of these little, about the size of a half dollar, Greenman tokens that we keep at the counter. This little girl was standing on the back of her baby brother’s stroller talking with me. We talked about all kinds of things, her brother occasionally pitching in. She saw the little Greenmen and picked one up. She asked me what it was. Her Dad, by that time, had come into the conversation and together we told her about the Greenman being a Celtic symbol that represented nature.  She asked a few more questions and Dad took over the answers. She seemed quite intrigued. She took the little green leafy face with the tiny nose and put it right up to her eye and stared at it. Then she looked up at dad with a quizzical expression and asked, 

“Are there buggers in there?” Dad started to answer her with some sense of logic then looked at me and shrugged.

I shrugged. “Could be,” I said.

“Could be,” he said.

She nodded and put it back in the bowl and seemed quite content that she had gotten all of the information she needed about the Greenman. So cute!

A couple of weeks ago one of the little guys I’ve watched grow from a six year old to a 6^th grader came in. We talked for a while about school and books he’s reading. I kept looking around for his mom. Soon another 6^th grade boy joined him. We all talked for a while and then I realized that my little customer wasn’t there with his mom. He was there with his buddy. For the first time!

I wanted to wrap my arms around him and say something idiotic like, “You’ve grownup!” But…thankfully…I restrained myself. Otherwise I might never have seen him again.