Once upon a time, when I was a teacher, I sometimes met my students at Asheville’s Barnes and Noble for tutoring. Many other evenings I sat in the coffee shop of that store grading student papers, making lesson plans, and writing my own essays and reviews.
During these sessions I took frequent breaks, shambling about perusing books and observing people.
Sometimes I imagined some humorous scenarios taking place among the stacks of books.
During these sessions I took frequent breaks, shambling about perusing books and observing people.
Sometimes I imagined some humorous scenarios taking place among the stacks of books.
A good while ago, I recorded a few of these and posted them to Facebook.
Now I am living in a town with a fine independent bookstore but no Barnes and Noble. I miss the old B&N.
In memory of my Barnes and Noble days, I offer Ashevillians some ways to liven up your next shopping experience.
*Buy an electronic cigarette. Attach a cigarette holder, wear an ascot, and stroll jauntily among the books. To carry this one off effectively, you should watch Peter O’Toole in “My Favorite Year.”
*Meander the premises asking various customers if they know where in the mall you could get a chainsaw pedicure.
*Fill your arms with erotic literature and ask the clerks whether they might recommend a particularly exciting work.
*Put on a safari hat, grab a copy of For Whom The Bell Tolls, and stroll around the store claiming to all and sundry that you are channeling the thoughts of Ernest Hemingway.
*Dress in a tuxedo, carry a martini glass half-filled with water in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other, and ask various customers and employees if they’d encountered a wild blonde named Zelda on the premises.
*Ask various female customers at Barnes and Noble what books they would recommend for holiday gifts. (Once, desperate to write a review of Christmas books appealing to women, I did this very thing and had a review written inside of two hours).
*Smile at the patrons seated near you in the coffee shop as if you not only know them, but also are also privy to their deepest, darkest secrets.
*Stand at the front door and greet everyone who enters the store: “Welcome to Barnes and Noble!” Big smile and palm extended, ready for a handshake or a tip. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be hired as the nation’s first Barnes and Noble greeter.
*This next one seems most effective in winter. Stand outside the front door wearing that same Fitzgerald tuxedo, a top hat, and a long overcoat. Add a red scarf for color. Open the door for every customer, bowing slightly and saying with grave dignity, “Welcome to our enchanting literary emporium.”
*Buy some fatigues at an Army-Navy store, put them on along with a pair of combat boots, shave your head, enter Barnes and Noble, pick up a copy of Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, go to the cashier’s desk, and ask the woman ringing up the sale if she thinks it’s true that Catcher is an “assassination trigger.”
*Lead a flash mob of students in singing Christmas carols in Barnes and Noble, leave the store, and continue singing carols while strolling through the mall until apprehended and ordered to desist by a six foot six inch cop. (Been there, done that).
*Stand up in the café and announce to all those on computers, cellphones, and tablets: “Is there a reader in the house?”
*Go up the down escalator and then down the up escalator. What would happen? Is there a rule against it? It seems to me not only a challenge and an amusement, but also an opportunity for exercise, and yet no one ever does it.
*Inform an employee that your sixty-year-old grandmother in 1965 had plastered the walls of her basement with pictures of the Beatles. Explain to him that her obsession with the Boys from England had permanently scarred you. Ask him to turn face down all remaindered copies of the coffee table books about the Beatles and to label them with “trigger warnings.”
*Slip Pentecostal tracts about the dangers of hell into the pages of Fifty Shades of Grey.
*Slip the phone number of your worst enemy into Fifty Shades of Grey.
*If you’re feeling amorous and open to adventure, domination, insanity, and possible venereal disease, slip your own phone number into Fifty Shades of Grey.
*When ordering coffee, tell the young barista that the man seated in the coffee shop, a total stranger to you, has a thing for her. Then take your coffee to the table nearest his, take a seat and a sip of java, lean toward the young man, and tell him the barista thinks he’s hot. Now climb the down escalator to the second floor, look below into the coffee shop, and see what, if anything, happens. Maybe nothing. Or maybe you may have just helped build a house in the ‘burbs and a family of five.
*Go to the Young Adult section, stand near the zombie books, and tell any young people passing by that you knew several Walking Dead in college and they really weren’t all they cracked up to be. Don’t mention that these collegiate zombies were potheads. Limit your time on this one, as the police will soon be on the way.
*For this one, you would need to remain three days unshaven. It will also help if you are over sixty. Wander through the front door of the store dressed in your green-striped bathrobe, bedroom slippers, checked pajama bottoms, and grey t-shirt. Shuffle to the café counter, order an Americano in a monotonic voice, stir a bit of sugar into the cup, and sit snuffling at one of the tables. After a few minutes, sit bolt upright, grab the table with both hands, and scream, “Oh my Lord! Where am I? How did I get here? And where’s the nurse?”
Maybe on my next visit to Asheville….