Okay, so there are some of you who probably don’t know it yet but…I love kids.
I really do. They’re so cute and cuddly and blah blah blah.
Okay, I hate kids. Can’t stand the ankle biters. I mean, for propogation of the species (hehehe, almost wrote spices) they’re okay. But individually, can’t stand ’em.
So it’s my lot in life to be constantly dealing with them. At the theater in Denver, I was in charge of the part of summer camp that had between 20 and 30 eight to twelve year olds for nine – NINE – solid weeks.
They loved me.
I taught classes at the theater for young kids who wanted to learn tech.
They loved me.
I’m a certified juvenile officer. The kids I’ve dealt with?
They love me.
So when LuAnn did a hardcore analysis of the bookstore and decided to keep it open, I thought…well, okay, you’re store, I guess.
Yeah, guess what….
A fucking kid’s store.
Are you kidding me with this? A store specializing in children’s books and children’s toys and parenting and all manner of crap that has to do with kids.
I just want to scream “Calgon take me away!”
LuAnn had a bunch of meetings with all kinds of people – bankers and Chamber of Commerce types and merchants and a rep from the Small Business Administration – and decided she hadn’t tried everything she could to keep the store open.
She did an analysis of each and every department and they had all fared and guess what? Only the kids’ department went up every year. Even during the shitty years, it kept going up. Everytime she’d expand that department, it would sell through.
So we’re keeping the store open and already the customer base has expanded. There have been people in who’ve we’ve never seen before, dropping money and asking to special order books (we’re still doing any special order anyone wants, not just kids’ books) and the whole bit.
Makes me crazy. Why? Not ’cause the store’s still open. Not ’cause LuAnn will continue to have that “I’m the Boss” OCD thing going.
‘Cause it’s kids.
Why in hell did it have to be kids?
I feel like Indiana Jones in teh first flick. “Snakes…why’d it have to be snakes? I hate snakes.”
Yeah, substitute kids and you’re pretty much floating on the same boat I’m stuck on. The store’ll be full of kids and their parents and their grandparents and everybody’ll be laughing and singing and having a grand ol’ time and it’ll drive me bugfuck. All that happiness…yeeech.
I mean, I’m excited about the store and the fact that I’ll still get James Lee Burke and Sean Doolittle and James Crumley at a discount, but…come on.
Kids?
Damn.
